THE CHILD’S VOICE AS A NARRATIVE CRITIQUE IN AFRICAN EX-CHILD SOLDIER MEMOIRS Thesis Submitted to The College of Arts and Sciences the UNIVERSITY OF DAYTON In Partial Fulfilment of the Requirements for The Degree of Master of Arts in English By Julius Maingi Muthusi, M.A. Dayton, Ohio May 2019 THE CHILD’S VOICE AS A NARRATIVE CRITIQUE IN AFRICAN EX-CHILD SOLDIER MEMOIRS Name: Muthusi, Julius Maingi APPROVED BY: Thomas Wendorf, Ph.D. Capstone Advisor Committee Chair Kara Getrost, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor Thomas Morgan, Ph.D. Faculty Advisor Associate Professor Tereza Szeghi, Ph.D. Associate Professor Director of Graduate Studies ii ABSTRACT THE CHILD’S VOICE AS A NARRATIVE CRITIQUE IN AFRICAN EX-CHILD SOLDIER MEMOIRS Name: Muthusi, Julius Maingi University of Dayton Advisor: Br. Thomas Wendorf, Ph.D. African Ex-Child Soldier Memoirs to some extent have been viewed as humanitarian texts that raise sympathy or even funds from readers to enhance child rights initiatives. Such initiatives have been noble and worthy. However, my literary analysis research goes beyond the humanitarian reception, to examine how the use of the child’s voice functions as a narrative critique of a distorted adult world. Exploring Ishmael Beah’s A Long Way Gone and Senait Mehari’s Heart of Fire, I examine how these authors employ a blend of aesthetic invention, remembered and experienced history inherent in the child’s voice within their narratives. My interpretive work involves tracing the political, social and economic histories of authors’ native spaces; examining functions and effects of child narrators; and understanding memory reconstruction paradigms and the functions of storytelling in confronting trauma. Displaced identities in children; Child’s Safety within a social justice quest; and Violence and trauma on children are some of the major themes arising from my research. The child’s voice indicates that adult-led national, international, socio-political and economic networks and practices are responsible for violations of the child’s rights. Through the capacity of the child’s perspective to cross taboo lines and the adult shame frontier, and to penetrate emotional danger zones easily, my research shows that the child’s voice exposes how adults within iii child soldier spaces and beyond, are flawed and limited by their participation in social, cultural and ideological institutions and discourses. iv Dedication to those whose childhoods are lost because of war in Sierra Leone, Eritrea, Southern Sudan, Central African Republic, Angola, Democratic Republic of Congo, Somalia and Liberia. v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I am indebted to many for the successful completion of this thesis, especially to Br. Tom Wendorf for his generous guidance and untiring support as my capstone supervisor. My two readers, Dr. Thomas Morgan and Dr. Kara Getrost for their critical feedback to my work, and to the Marianists of the Chambers Community for their patience and encouragement. My gratitude goes also to the Rector’s Office and Br. Dan Klco for generosity and caring support throughout my Master’s Program. To the Marianists of the USA Province and those from the Region of Eastern Africa, I couldn’t have reached here without you. vi TABLE OF CONTENTS ABSTRACT ....................................................................................................................... iii DEDICATION .................................................................................................................... v ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................... vi LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTATIONS .......................................................... ix CHAPTER 1 THE CHILD’S NARRATIVE VOICE ........................................................ 1 CHAPTER 2 CONTEXT AND PARAMETERS ............................................................... 4 Background context ........................................................................................................ 4 Research goals ................................................................................................................ 7 Research questions .......................................................................................................... 7 Research methodology .................................................................................................... 7 CHAPTER 3 CRITICAL LITERATURE REVIEW .......................................................... 9 Fact and fiction ............................................................................................................... 9 Memory Reconstruction ................................................................................................ 11 The Child Narrator’s Effect .......................................................................................... 17 Social Justice Quests ..................................................................................................... 24 Displacement................................................................................................................. 29 CHAPTER 4 ANALYSIS AND DISCUSSION .............................................................. 31 Displaced Identities in Children.................................................................................... 32 The Child’s Safety within a Social Justice Quest ......................................................... 37 vii Innocent Children taking Adult Roles .......................................................................... 40 Violence and Trauma on Children ................................................................................ 43 CHAPTER 5 SUMMARY AND CONCLUSION ........................................................... 50 WORKS CITED ............................................................................................................... 52 viii LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS AND NOTATIONS Child Soldier – Any person under the age of 18 years who is part of any kind of regular or irregular armed force or group in any capacity. CRC – Convention on the Rights of the Child ELF – Eritrean Liberation Front EPLF – Eritrean People’s Liberation Movement RUF – Revolutionary United Front, also referred to as Rebels. ix CHAPTER 1 THE CHILD’S NARRATIVE VOICE The use of a child’s narrative voice basically means that readers see through the eyes of a child in a narrative. Child narrators have been commonly employed by adult authors to achieve certain artistic goals. Linda Steinmez argues that child narrators and child perspectives provoke adult readers’ reaction and thinking about or questioning established worldviews (47). Unlike adults, children have fewer filters when they meet the world and exhibit innocence and uniqueness in how they see it. In some cases, as Michael Seraphinoff suggests, adults are even more tolerant when the child gives voice to certain uncomfortable or controversial truths (2). They disarm adult prejudices and provide potential converging points of reflection and reconciliation for differing factions of the adult world. In ex-child soldier memoirs under this study, the narrator and the main character are the same. This is a key aspect for this research partly because the authors are engaged in a narrative of self-interest while they remember their own painful childhood past. Readers of the narratives thus perceive through the first person narrator ‘I’ and potentially take the child narrator’s side, while they also bring in their adult perspectives into their reading. Unfortunately, readers do not have the richness of the omniscient narrator, or the third person narrator points of views. The first person narrator is limiting in that not all events taking place are recorded or are of interest to the narrator, yet those events may contribute to the development of the story. Nevertheless, life writings are often characterized by their use of the first person narrator. 1 Memoirs, like other life writings, generally take the first person narrator’s point of view because their story is not a created one but one that has been lived. So the narrator remains superior to the reader because it’s only through the narrator that we can access and perhaps process information. However, memoirs under this study bring in personal details based on events that are in the public and historical domain. Ishmael Beah in A Long Way Gone, writes within the context of the Sierra Leone civil war, while Senait Mehari narrates her personal story within the Eritrean liberation wars in her memoir, Heart of Fire. Through historical research, these public and historical events provide me with a context from which I draw information that is beneficial towards the interpretation of their texts. My thesis explores how ex-child-soldier memoirs utilize the child’s voice as a means of exposing flaws of the adult world in their environment and beyond, but also implicitly aim their criticism towards the historical, political and economic decadence of adult systems that have led to the narrator's’ experiences as child soldiers. Using Beah’s A Long Way Gone and Mehari’s Heart of Fire, my thesis will examine how the memoirs’ use of the child’s voice draws critical readers to a conversation of truthfulness and social justice, beyond a humanitarian consumption that only stirs a sentimental response from readers and at most charity to mitigate the results of a human disaster. The root causes unfortunately seldom get fully addressed, and perpetrators have been known