Overview

A critical examination of six memoirs and six novels written by and about young adults from Africa who were once child soldiers. This book analyzes not only how such narratives document the human rights violations experienced by these former child soldiers but also how they connect and disconnect from their readers in the global public sphere. It draws on existing literary scholarship about novels and memoirs as well as on the fieldwork conducted by social scientists about African children in combat situations. Writing That Breaks Stones groups the twelve narratives into categories and analyzes each segment, comparing individually written memoirs with those written collaboratively, and novels whose narratives are fragmented with those that depict surreal landscapes of misery. It concludes that the memoirs focus on a lone individual’s struggles in a hostile environment, and use repetition, logical contradictions, narrative breaks, and reversals of binaries in order to tell their stories. By contrast, the novels use narrative ambiguity, circularity, fragmentation, and notions of dystopia in ways that call attention to the child soldiers’ communities and environments. All twelve narratives depict the child soldier’s agency and culpability somewhat ambiguously, effectively reflecting the ethical dilemmas of African children in combat.

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9781611863758

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Reviews

"""This is the book on child soldier narratives that we have been waiting for. Engaged, nuanced, and non-sentimental, Joya Uraizee's book allows for the narrative uncertainty that makes the topic complex and compelling. Writing That Breaks Stones draws from a substantial and varied corpus and will be the go-to book on the subject for some time."" --ELENI COUNDOURIOTIS, Professor, Department of English, University of Connecticut, and author of The People's Right to the Novel: War Fiction in the Postcolony"

This is the book on child soldier narratives that we have been waiting for. Engaged, nuanced, and non-sentimental, Joya Uraizee's book allows for the narrative uncertainty that makes the topic complex and compelling. Writing That Breaks Stones draws from a substantial and varied corpus and will be the go-to book on the subject for some time. --ELENI COUNDOURIOTIS, Professor, Department of English, University of Connecticut, and author of The People's Right to the Novel: War Fiction in the Postcolony

Author Information

Joya Uraizee is Associate Professor and Associate Chair in the Department of English at Saint Louis University in Missouri. She is the author of This Is No Place for a Woman: Nadine Gordimer, Nayantara Sahgal, Buchi Emecheta and the Politics of Gender and In the Jaws of the Leviathan: Genocide Fiction and Film.

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