Rewriting the SLTRC: Masculinities, the Arts of Forgetting, and Intimate Space in Delia Jarrett-Macauley's Moses, Citizen and Me and Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love

This article analyzes two novels that grapple with the politics of memory, reconciliation, and forgiveness in the setting of post-civil war Sierra Leone—Delia Jarrett-Macauley's Moses, Citizen and Me (2006) and Aminatta Forna's The Memory of Love (2011). I argue that Jarrett-Macauley and Forna write against the public testimony model of memory proliferated by international Truth and Reconciliation Commissions in post-conflict societies. I suggest that Jarrett-Macauley and Forna center their novels on male protagonists who find that intimate spaces are the more appropriate venue to struggle with the efficacy of silence and truth-telling in the harrowing aftermath of violence and, as such, put forward new and nuanced representations of African masculinities and spatialities.