Memory, innocence and nostalgia: other versions of African childhood in two African texts

Abstract

There are a number of memoirs/autobiographies and biographies by African writers on their childhoods in Africa. However, many of these texts tend to focus mostly on the child protagonist�s experiences of colonialism, slavery, war, death and deprivation. This article moves away from these narratives of deprivation and trauma, focusing on other versions of African childhoods where the child lives a carefree life devoid of danger and scarcity of resources. Using Camara Laye�s The Dark Child and Wole Soyinka�s Ak�: The Years of Childhood and doing a textual analysis of the content, themes and characters, this article argues that these texts can be read as recollections of nostalgia and memories of a carefree time in the life of two African children, a time that the narrators reminisce upon through the act of retelling in order to revisit the joys and innocence of those days.