Ouma Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature

Memories and Futures Past
1. Auflage 2020
ISBN: 978-3-030-36256-0
Verlag: Springer International Publishing
Format: PDF
Kopierschutz: 1 - PDF Watermark

E-Book, Englisch, 202 Seiten, eBook

Reihe: African Histories and Modernities

This book examines the representation of figures, memories and images of childhood in selected contemporary diasporic African fiction by Adichie, Abani, Wainaina and Oyeyemi. The book argues that childhood is a key framework for thinking about contemporary African and African Diasporic identities. It argues that through the privileging of childhood memory, alternative conceptions of time emerge in this literature, and which allow African writers to re-imagine what family, ethnicity, nation means within the new spaces of diaspora that a majority of them occupy. The book therefore looks at the connections between childhood, space, time and memory, childhood gender and sexuality, childhoods in contexts of war, as well as migrant childhoods. These dimensions of childhood particularly relate to the return of the memory of Biafra, the figures of child soldiers, memories of growing up in Cold War Africa, queer boyhoods/sonhood as well as experiences of migration within Africa, North America and Europe.

Zielgruppe

Research

Autoren/Hrsg.

Ouma, Christopher E. W.

Inhaltsverzeichnis

Chapter 1: Introduction: Constructing Childhood as a Set of Ideas.- Chapter 2: “We Are Children of the Cold War”: Childhood Times as Alternative.- Chapter 3: Countries of the Mind: Cartographies of Postmemory.- Chapter 4: Childhoods of War: “Na Craze World Be Dat”.- Chapter 5: Queer Childhoods and Multidirectional Desire.- Chapter 6: Diaspora Childhoods: Creating Sublimated Connections.- Chapter 7: Identity and Childhood.

Über Autor(innen)

Christopher E W Ouma is Senior Lecturer in the Department of English at the University of Cape Town. He holds a PhD from the Department of African Literature at the University of the Witwatersrand. Christopher has co-edited The Spoken Word project: Stories Travelling Through Africa. He is also currently editor of Social Dynamics: A Journal of African Studies.