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AEGIS European Conference on African Studies
11 - 14 July 2007
African Studies Centre, Leiden, The Netherlands
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Painful Truths: The Image of the African Refugee in Children’s Literature and the Politics of the Global Market
| Panel |
41. The Art of Wor(l)d Markets: Development, Diaspora, and Narratives of Africa in Europe
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| Paper ID | 645 |
| Author(s) |
Helff, Sissy
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| Paper |
No paper submitted
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| Abstract | The all-embracing thematic and methodological changes in the 1970s introduced stories for young adults which were told from a more individualized perspective where schematic constructions of adolescent protagonists as well as auctorial narrative perspectives gradually lost their importance. This narrative shift towards a more subjective point of view paved the way for a more individualized literature for young adults in which the motivation and psyche of a child/teenaged character-narrator propels the narratives. This literary development increasingly levels out differences in the perception of literature for young adults and more general literature. Thus in the wake of these changes political themes have become major topics of which the image of the refugee is a perfect example. And while this narrative shift is significant, exoticisms and wrongly understood didactics might become problematic, since abusively used didactic agendas might very effectively combine multiple addressing with powerfully implemented stereotypical representations. In this paper I will look at Beverley Naidoo's The Other Side of Truth (2000), its sequel Web of Lies (2004) and Benjamin Zephaniah's Refugee Boy (2004), all of which tell the story of children who travel to London from Africa as political refugees. |
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