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.".



Autorentext
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.


Inhalt
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.
Titel
Childhood in Contemporary Diasporic African Literature
Untertitel
Memories and Futures Past
EAN
9783030362560
Format
E-Book (pdf)
Veröffentlichung
27.02.2020
Digitaler Kopierschutz
Wasserzeichen
Dateigrösse
1.87 MB
Anzahl Seiten
202