This Article Full Text (PDF) References Alert me when this article is cited Alert me if a correction is posted Services Email this article to a friend Similar articles in this journal Similar articles in Web of Science Alert me to new issues of the journal Add to Saved Citations Download to citation manager Request Permissions Request Reprints Add to My Marked Citations Citing Articles Citing Articles via Google Scholar Citing Articles via Scopus Google Scholar Articles by Muponde, R. Search for Related Content Social Bookmarking                         What's this?

Opinion, Dialogue, Review

Unhappy family, unhappy children and the end of childhood in Dambudzo Marechera's The House of Hunger

University of the Witwatersrand

The Zimbabwean writer Dambudzo Marechera mobilizes recollections of childhood not only as an event in his adult life, but as a way of articulating a longing for new forms of social consciousness. Childhood itself is recalled both as narrative and source of narrative. As such it is a place and time of memory. It is not just a construct of writing, but a way of coming to terms with an enormous social experience. This article discusses the nature of childhood and its uses in Marechera's dystopian fiction. It demonstrates the ways in which Marechera's fiction revises sets of concepts that constitute ‘the child’ by portraying childhoods that point to the dissolution and reinvention of a symbolic order in a post-national African space.

Key Words: childhood recollected • dystopia • narrative • post-national • ‘unhappy family’

Childhood, Vol. 13, No. 4, 519-532 (2006)
DOI: 10.1177/0907568206068557


CiteULike    Complore    Connotea    Del.icio.us    Digg    Reddit    Technorati    Twitter    What's this?