Child Soldier Memoirs and the ‘Classic’ Slave Narrative: Tracing the Origins

ABSTRACT

Despite the centuries that divide them, there are striking parallels between the contemporary child soldier narrative and the antebellum Anglo-American slave narrative. Both are authored by writer-activists, often with the assistance of a (white) ghostwriter or editor. Both propagate a particular political/human rights agenda: to end slavery or the use of child soldiers. Both favour redemptive endings and often find themselves caught up in controversies over their veracity. This literary genealogy lends some legitimacy to the child soldier narrative as a genre, despite its very recent development. Slave narratives were initially dismissed and denigrated for not being real literature, but eventually became accepted as worthy of scholarly attention. In this article, I compare child soldier memoirs by Ishmael Beah, Emmanuel Jal, Senait Mehari, China Keitetsi and Grace Akallo to the four slave narratives deemed ‘classic’ by Henry Louis Gates, Jr.: those of Frederick Douglass, Harriet Jacobs, Mary Prince, and Olaudah Equiano.

KEYWORDS:

• Child soldier narratives
• slave narratives
• human rights
• ghostwriters

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Notes on contributor

Kaelyn Kaoma recently completed her PhD in the Department of English at the University of Toronto, where she successfully defended her doctoral dissertation, Slave, Hero, Victim: The Child Soldier Narrative in Context. She specialises in African literature and life writing.

Notes

1 The maiden name of Susanna Moodie, of Roughing It In the Bush fame (Whitlock 249).

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada.