Growing Up New : Reading the Contemporary African Bildungsroman
Why has the bildungsroman, the coming-of-age narrative, been such a dominant part of post-independence African writing? Do children witness large-scale social changes in radically new ways? What does the genre tell us about the pressures shaping young African subjects? And what possibilities might the genre allow for?
In this course we’ll turn to a range of texts from the African continent that explore the complexities of growing up in rapidly changing societies. From the darkly comic Zambian film I Am Not a Witch, to J.M. Coetzee’s sly, pseudo-autobiographical Boyhood, we’ll encounter a wide range of stories that challenge the idea of what “growing up” means on the world’s “youngest” continent.
Other texts include (subject to change):
- Tsitsi Dangarembga – Nervous Conditions
- Binyavanga Wainaina – One Day I Will Write About This Place
- Short Stories by Diriye Osman and Pravasan Pillay, among others