Emerging African Voices: A Study of Contemporary African Literature
Powered By Xquantum

Emerging African Voices: A Study of Contemporary African Literatu ...

Chapter 1:  Global Specters
Read
image Next

This is a limited free preview of this book. Please buy full access.


Chapter 1

Global Specters

Child Soldiers in the
Post-National Fiction
of Uzodinma Iweala and Chris Abani

Alexandra W. Schultheis

If we are the great innocents in this war, then where did we learn the evil we practice?

—Chris Abani, Song for Night

In her contribution to the 2006 PMLA volume, The Humanities in Human Rights: Critique, Language, Politics, Jacqueline Bhabha frames her argument on the ambiguous status of the child in human rights law and policy with the question, “What sort of human is a child?” (1526). Her analysis of the cultural and legal definitions of a child, particularly