Orphans of the nation: Transitional justice practices in third generation Nigerian child soldier narratives

Abstract

I argue that the hasty armistice following the Nigerian Civil War moved to reunification without reconciliation creating a lacuna that haunts Nigeria still. I consider how the child soldier narrative grapples with and processes that untreated wound left by the war, participating in a form of transitional justice. I examine three third-generation Nigerian novels, Abani’s Song for Night (2007), Adichie’s Half of a Yellow Sun (2006), and Iweala’s Beasts of No Nation (2005) to illustrate the various approaches, spiritual, historical, and psychological in the processing of post-conflict trauma.

Keywords:

• Third-generation Nigerian literature
• child soldier narrative
• Nigerian Civil War
• Chris Abani
• Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie
• Uzodinma Iweala

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No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1 There are widely varying statistics ranging from as few as 500,000 deaths to as many as 3,000,000 deaths.

2 The following sources provide a more in-depth and detailed conversation about defining third generation Nigerian writing: Pius Adesanmi and Chris Dunton’s “Nigeria’s Third Generation Writing: Historiography and Preliminary Theoretical Considerations;” Madhu Krishnan’s “Affiliation, Disavowal, and National Commitment in Third

Generation African Literature;” Oluwole Coker’s “Development Imperatives and Transnationalism

in Third-Generation Nigerian Fiction,” and Hamish Dalley’s “The Idea of ‘Third Generation Nigerian Literature’: Conceptualizing Historical Change and Territorial Affiliation in the Contemporary Nigerian Novel.”

3 For an in-depth examination of the complicated reception of the figure of the child in third-generation Nigerian works by Western audiences, see Madelaine Hron’s “‘Ora Na-Azu Nwa’: The Figure of the Child in Third-Generation Nigerian Novels.”

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Alexander Hartwiger

Alexander Hartwiger is an Associate Professor of Contemporary World and Postcolonial Literature at Framingham State University. Before joining Framingham State University, he was an Assistant Professor of English at American University of Beirut. In 2011–12 he was an International Fellow with the Center for Online Learning (COIL) at SUNY. His research interests include contemporary African literature, literatures of diaspora, human rights and literature, and globally networked learning. His work has been published in collections by MLA and Routledge and the journals Matatu, Postcolonial Text, and New Global Studies.