Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature

1. Front Matter

   Pages i-ix

   PDF

2. Introduction: Constructing Childhood as a Set of Ideas

   • Christopher E. W. Ouma

   Pages 1-37

3. “We Are Children of the Cold War”: Childhood Times as Alternative

   • Christopher E. W. Ouma

   Pages 39-70

4. Countries of the Mind: Cartographies of Postmemory

   • Christopher E. W. Ouma

   Pages 71-97

5. Childhoods of War: “Na Craze World Be Dat”

   • Christopher E. W. Ouma

   Pages 99-118

6. Queer Childhoods and Multidirectional Desire

   • Christopher E. W. Ouma

   Pages 119-140

7. Diaspora Childhoods: Creating Sublimated Connections

   • Christopher E. W. Ouma

   Pages 141-182

8. Identity and Childhood

   • Christopher E. W. Ouma

   Pages 183-193

9. Back Matter

   Pages 195-202

   PDF

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. 

• Heinemann African Writers
• James Currey
• Canon
• Ngugi wa Thiong’o
• Structural Adjustment Programs
• Cold War
• AIDS
• Chinua Achebe
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie

“The book’s arguments are lucidly presented and clearly demonstrated in the literary analyses across the chapters.” (Daniel Chukwuemeka, The Black Scholar, Vol. 51 (4), 2021)

“A very detailed historiography of childhood in African literature. … The book is not only an important addition to African literary childhood scholarship, it is also a much-needed contribution to memory studies in and on Africa. … Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature: Memories and Futures Past is an important work; it is an excellent addition to African literary scholarship.” (Sakiru Adebayo, Research in African Literatures, Vol. 51 (2), 2020)

• University of Cape Town, Cape Town, South Africa

  Christopher E. W. Ouma

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.

Policies and ethics