There are numerous coming-of-age stories to be found in literature, film and theatre and throughout literary and cinematic history. Well known examples are James Joyce’s A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (1916), Harper Lee’s To Kill a Mockingbird (1960) and J.D. Salinger’s The Catcher in the Rye (1951), to name just a few.
In this course we will focus on such stories from the Global South. We will analyse the following three contemporary works: Frying Plantain: Stories (2019) by Zalika Reid-Benta, Under the Udala Trees (2015) by Chinelo Okparanta and We need New Names (2013) by NoViolet Bulawayo. We will explore how the specific perspective of a young person sheds light on the diasporic experience, on political upheavels and the adult world. Please read and prepare Reid-Benta’s Frying Plantain: Stories for our first sessions. |
