Child Soldier Stories and their Fictions

Abstract

In this essay I examine child soldier stories, one of the most popular and critically successful genres of African writing in the United States in recent years. They are unique in some respects, but many publishers and US readers are already familiar with their most basic themes. The success of the genre owes much to the fact that it resembles an existing book marketing category known as misery literature. Publishers recognize that child soldier stories may (and in some cases do) generate similar levels of interest and profitability. However, I argue that they are not bound by the same strict distinctions between fantasy and reality. Many US readers associate the genre – and the practice of child soldiering more generally – with Africa. Consequently, child soldier stories are treated as evidence of a continent-wide epidemic that largely exists in the imaginations of its US audience.

• child soldiers
• African literature
• misery literature
• bestsellers

Notes

1 A small number of imprints – most notably Heinemann's African Writers Series (AWS), but also to a lesser extent Longman's Drumbeats, Macmillan's Pacesetters, and Oxford University Press's Three Crowns Series – have been responsible for publishing much, but by no means all, of the Anglophone African literature that is available in the West.

2 None of the major trade publishers responded to my requests for the sales figures of individual titles. The MacOdrum Library at Carleton University was rebuffed in its attempts to purchase a licence for the Nielsen BookScan sales database.

3 See, for example, Armah (1973), Pepetela (1983) and Saro-Wiwa (1985). Several child soldier narratives have been published in other countries more recently, such as those by Badjoko (2005) and Couao-Zotti (1998). Because they have not been translated into English and are not widely available in the United States, I do not consider them in this essay.

4 Indeed, Faith J. H. McDonnell, co-writer of Akallo's memoir, explains that the publisher Chosen Books deliberately sought out this kind of narrative rather than being offered a manuscript as is typical in the industry. She then solicited Akallo. Tellingly, the former child soldier thanks McDonnell ‘for the idea of writing this book’ (McDonnell and Akallo 2007, 17–18).

5 The organization changed its name in 2011 from the Coalition to Stop the Use of Child Soldiers to Child Soldiers International. For clarity, I will use the latter for purposes not related to bibliographic citation.

6 According to Ineka Hall in an email to me, CSI plans to release a new global report in 2016, which will become available nearly a decade after the previous one.

7 For a more detailed account of the dispute, see Rayman (2008).

8 In an interesting coincidence, Beah bonds with his commanding officer through a shared appreciation for reading and performing monologues from this dramatic work (2007, 104).

9 Indeed, editorial rigour is apparently sacrificed in Keitetsi's memoir in order for the ex-child soldier to narrate her story ‘entirely in her own idiom’ (2004, vi).