Youth and Peaceful Elections in Kenya

Chapter Nine: Children of the Post-Colony and Violence: Starting from the Hearth

136 Youth and Peaceful Elections in Kenya Chapter Nine Children of the Post-Colony and Violence: Starting from the Hearth Doseline Kiguru Introduction This paper discusses the rising popularity of the child’s perspective in narrating violence in the contemporary African literature. It investigates the role of the child figure in telling narratives of violence based on Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie’s two novels: Purple Hibiscus (2004) and Half of a Yellow Sun (2006). It explores the uniqueness of the child’s voice in the two novels and the significance of the domestic violence which is presented in a parallel manner with the violence at the political and state level. It concludes that the foregrounding the violence at the domestic level as an abnormal which has been normalized points out that the freedom individuals enjoy is linked to the larger microcosm of political freedom. That to achieve the wider political stability and peace, one has to start at the most basic human rights. By putting emphasis on the freedom at the family and individual levels, Adichie is offering a solution to the violence which continues to define the post-colony.To enjoy freedom and stability at the political and state level, the people must start with the personal freedom at the domestic level. In the role of being the mirror of the society, literature from Africa has continued to uniquely capture the historical developments of the postcolonial African states from the pre-colonial era to the present. In the colonial era, the main themes which pre-occupied pre-independence writings by many of the African writers of the time included the affirmation of the African identity and the fight against colonialism and westernization. After political independence in most of the African states, there started emerging works romancing the new nation after the successful overthrow of colonial powers. But the celebration ended soon when the people in the new nation state started to realize that the post-colonial state was just as bad as the colonial state, if not worse. The writing emerging from this era, therefore, started focusing on the disillusionment of the people. The writers, responding to the political and cultural winds of the day, made attempts to aesthetically explain what the nation state was undergoing. They focused on themes such as political coups, change, corruption, neo-colonialism and democracy, among others. However, it is notable that the contemporary new and young writers in Africa appear to have abandoned the earlier themes which preoccupied their predecessors. About five decades after most of the African states attained their independence, ‘the children of the post-colony’, as they have been named by Waberi Abdourahman (1998), have now come of age. This is the generation of writers who were born after the independence of the African states. For this generation, their narratives, though not deviating so much from the political and historical base, are now being told in a different voice. Most of the narratives are concerned with matters of hybridity, multiculturalism, globalization and human rights. Particularly striking is the figure of the child or the young narrative voice. The writers who fall in this category either employ the child to tell the story or as the protagonist. In Nigeria, the writings of ‘the children of the post-colony’, to use Aboudrahman Waberi’s words, has gone beyond the country and the continental borders. Chimamanda Adichie, Ben Okri and Helon Habila, in Nigeria, have actively employed the voice and the eye of the child, to tell the narratives of the post-colony. Okri, in his trilogy, The Famished Road, Songs of Enchantment and Infinite Riches, has traced the spirit of the spirit-child –the child caught up in the never ending cycle of birth, death and return. Habila narrates his two novels Measuring Time and Waiting for an Angel through the eyes of children who are growing up. In Measuring Time, he tells the story of twin brothers Mamo and LaMamo who face domestic abuse under the guardianship of their father. The boys try to run away from the violence in their family setting only to realize that violence is what defines the whole society. LaMamo, who becomes a child soldier, eventually returns home battered both physically and psychologically. Eventually, he dies as violently as he had lived. In Waiting for an Angel, Habila tells the story of a young journalist who faces violent oppression from the government for daring to speak the truth. Many of the contemporary writers have widely used the...