Tracing Errantry

Abstract

CHILD SEXUAL ABUSE / CHILDHOOD SEXUAL VIOLENCE / childhood sexual assault. The lexicon labelling the sexual trauma placed upon children’s bodies and minds changes, unlike that of the current power struggles behind such trauma. Patriarchal and antiquated views of female bodies and female agency, allowing sexual abuse and the often-resulting victimisation to continue, must be challenged at all levels of society, individually, institutionally, and politically. I begin such a task by focusing on literature – specifically contemporary, newly emerging canonical literature for young adults that writes openly about the occurrence of child sexual abuse and the emotional and psychological damage caused by such abuse. Teenagers and young adults often encounter canonical literature through educational texts. Scholars’ examination of such texts can lead to interpersonal challenges to power systems. The Jamaican-Canadian author Nalo Hopkinson’s novel Midnight Robber (2000)1 prominently positions the conversation about the prevalence of child sexual abuse occurring in society, along with the way in which society often responds, and then provides another model of addressing child sexual abuse to support the transformation of victims into survivors. Midnight Robber, Hopkinson’s second novel, emphasises the Afro-Caribbean protagonist’s body movements through various spaces. Many scholars have discussed how Hopkinson depicts technology, globalisation, modernity, high/ low cyberpunk, and postcolonial cybernetics in her work of speculative fiction.2 A few scholars have combined race and bodies, such as Elizabeth Boyle3 and Erin M. Fehskens,4 or spatial issues of migration, slavery, and dystopian spaces, such as Giselle L. Anatol5 and Myriam Moïse.6 Very few scholars have made child sexual abuse their primary focus, although it occurs towards the middle of the novel, propelling the rest of the narrative. Regarding assault, Shelby Crosby discusses the re-victimisation of the protagonist, Tan-Tan Habib, through the disregard of communities, which mirrors the re-victimisation that occurred during slavery and colonialism.7 However, while Crosby focuses on the disruption