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Slave, Hero, Victim: the Child Soldier Narrative in Context

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Slave, Hero, Victim: the Child Soldier Narrative in Context Slave, Hero, Victim: The Child Soldier Narrative in Context by Kaelyn Elizabeth Alexandria Kaoma A thesis submitted in conformity with the requirements for the degree of Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto © Copyright by Kaelyn Kaoma 2017 Slave, Hero, Victim: The Child Soldier Narrative in Context Kaelyn Kaoma Doctor of Philosophy Department of English University of Toronto 2017 Abstract This dissertation interrogates the newly prominent figure of the child soldier in African literature. I examine a number of recent texts narrating the child soldier experience, both memoir (Ishmael Beah, Emmanuel Jal, China Keitetsi, Senait Mehari, Grace Akallo, Tchicaya Missamou, Niromi de Soyza) and fiction (Uzodinma Iweala, Ahmadou Kourouma, Emmanuel Dongala, Chris Abani). The anthropologist David Rosen argues that the contemporary Western humanitarian narrative often makes an automatic assumption of innocence based on age that is not necessarily applicable in non-Western cultures. The danger of imposing such Western frameworks on non-Western cultures is that it risks engaging in the same colonial tropes of paternalism towards the native “child” that were used to maintain dominance over colonized populations. Yet the hunger for narratives that portray the child soldier as an innocent victim who eventually is rescued and rehabilitated, as well as the fact that child soldier narratives are almost purely an African genre (even though there are substantial numbers of child soldiers in Asia, South America and the Middle East) suggests the kind of Orientalism that Edward Said warned us against: a desire to see Africa specifically as a place of violence and lost innocence that can be redeemed through Western intervention. ii This study takes a comparative approach, contextualizing the current literary trope of depicting the child soldier as lost innocent by comparing these contemporary narratives to a range of other texts. Chapter One examines the striking parallels between child soldier narratives and antebellum American slave narratives. Chapter Two juxtaposes child soldier narratives to the very different portrayal of South African youth involved in the militarized anti-apartheid movement. Chapter Three compares child soldier narratives to three texts narrating the experiences of young adult soldiers in the Zimbabwean war of liberation. Chapter Four questions why the child soldier is almost invariably imagined as African, while analyzing the one real exception to this rule, Niromi de Soyza's Tamil Tigress. Ultimately, through its examination of literary representations, my dissertation exposes the category of (African) child soldiers as highly problematic, allowing us to reconsider implicit myths of childhood and human rights. iii Acknowledgments This research was financially supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada, the Department of English, the School of Graduate Studies and New College. I am also grateful to the University of the Witswatersrand, the University of Cape Town, and the University of Zambia for hosting me as a visiting scholar. Thank you as well to the helpful staff at the UNISA Library in Pretoria and the National Archives of Zambia. I feel truly fortunate to have the committee that I had for my thesis. Neil ten Kortenaar was, without a doubt, the best supervisor I could have ever hoped for. His advice and suggestions shaped this project in so many crucial ways, and I was constantly amazed by his ability to respond with extensive, detailed commentary within days of me sending him a draft. Uzo Esonwanne's careful reading and thoughtful feedback made my work so much stronger. Alexie Tcheuyap's insights and faith in this project have also been invaluable. Many thanks to my external examiner, Eleni Coundouriotis, for her incisive, comprehensive, and generous feedback on my manuscript. I would also like to thank my examining committee, Ato Quayson and Cannon Schmitt, for their engagement with my work and thought-provoking questions during my defense. Thank you as well to Helene Strauss, who planted the seeds for this project back in my MA by assigning Ishmael Beah and David Rosen in her class on "Intra-African Mobilities." I also owe a debt of gratitude to Marguerite Perry, Tanuja Persaud, Sangeeta Panjwani, and the other administrative staff in the Department of English for guiding me through this process. iv I am deeply thankful for my friends and colleagues here at the University of Toronto, including Chima Osakwe, Matt Schneider, Melissa Auclair, and many more. I doubt I would have ever finished this dissertation without the support (and peer pressure!) of my writing group, whose rotating cast included Elisa Tersigni, Nathan Murray, and numerous others. My heartfelt gratitude goes to Jay Rajiva, Joanne Leow, and Esther de Bruijn for all the advice and inspiration. And of course, I can't forget to acknowledge my "work wife" Irene Mangoutas and my dear former office-mate Katie Mullins for their company during all those long days working in JHB 722. I also want to thank my extended family, both here in North America and Zambia, especially my parents, Don and Betsy Morrison, for their support and encouragement in everything that I do, and their keen interest in this project in particular. Thank you to my husband, Lazarus Kaoma, for his patience and his pride in my accomplishments. Finally, thanks to my son Levi, for being a welcome distraction from my work over the past few years. v Table of Contents Acknowledgments .......................................................................................................................... iv Introduction ..................................................................................................................................... 1 Chapter One: The Narrativization of the African Child Soldier Experience: Theorizing a Genre .................................................................................................................. 15 Chapter Two: Innocent Victims or “Young Lions”: The Differing Representations of the Child Soldier Figure .......................................................................................................... 67 Chapter Three: "We had no choice:" Decision-Making in Adult & Child Soldier Narratives .............................................................................................................................. 117 Chapter Four: Child Soldier Narratives: An African Genre? .................................................... 155 Conclusion .................................................................................................................................. 206 Works Consulted ........................................................................................................................ 215 vi 1 Introduction When we hear the term "child soldier," what do we picture? Most likely, the image that comes to mind is something close to the iconic image on the front cover of former Sierra Leonean child soldier Ishmael Beah's bestselling memoir, A Long Way Gone: a black African boy, maybe twelve or thirteen, wearing shorts and battered flip-flops rather than fatigues, burdened by the weapon he carries, which is almost as tall as he is, looking downcast -- a lost innocent, his childhood stolen, forced to fight against his will by depraved adults. 1 Indeed, this is the figure that Beah ultimately represents, although it is the process of rehabilitation in a UNICEF camp that teaches him how he has been brainwashed and exploited. It is also the figure that appears in the numerous novels and memoirs detailing the experiences of child soldiers that have appeared in print since the turn of the century. However, how does the young Zimbabwean freedom fighter, the teenaged South African anti-apartheid activist, or the adolescent Sri Lankan girl who joins the Tamil Tigers fit into this picture? This project investigates a burgeoning new genre of African literature: the child soldier narrative. I examine a number of recent texts, both memoir (Beah's A Long Way Gone, Emmanuel Jal's War Child, China Keitetsi's Child Soldier, etc.) and fiction (Uzodinma Iweala's Beast of No Nation, Ahmadou Kourouma's Allah is not obliged, Ken Saro-Wiwa's Sozaboy, etc.), published by writers from a wide range of countries, including Sierra Leone (Beah), Sudan (Jal), and Uganda (Keitetsi). Of course, child 1 This cover image comes from a picture taken by photojournalist Michael Kamber in June 2003. The original caption, as given on Kamber's personal website, reads "A child soldier in Ganta, a town on the Liberia-Guinea border. The town was shelled so heavily that not a single building was left standing." 2 soldiers themselves are not a new phenomenon, despite increasing attention paid to them in recent years. Scholars like to point to the 1212 Children’s Crusade or bugle boys in the American Civil War as examples of young people involved in warfare throughout history. What is new is the current boom in child soldier narratives. With the exception of Saro-Wiwa’s Sozaboy (1985), all of the texts I will be examining were published within the last fifteen years. This veritable explosion of texts narrating the child soldier experience signals a new literary (sub)genre that demands exploration, as it raises questions about this particular political moment. The title of my dissertation signals my comparative approach, contextualizing the current literary trope of depicting the child soldier
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