Interrogating child vulnerabilities in selected Ugandan contemporary fiction

Abstract

This study interrogates child vulnerabilities in Ugandan contemporary fiction in Waiting, Secrets no More, Fate of the Banished and Footprints of the Outsider. It does not only portray child vulnerability but also goes ahead to explore how narrative devices have been used to portray vulnerability and its negative effects on the child characters in the texts. According to this study, political unrest has been the major cause of child vulnerability since independence. The child characters that these two selected authors use air out the horrifying experiences that they battle with. These children according to this study do not just sit down and allow these experiences to overshadow them but they try their best as children to use various coping mechanisms as a way of dealing with these situations. They use resistance and resilience to solve what they go through during the political unrest in their respective communities. This study therefore explores various modes of vulnerability which include gender-based vulnerabilities and vulnerabilities in domestic and school environments in the four selected texts. Furthermore, the study analyses the representation of resistance and resilience to vulnerability in the texts. To achieve the above objectives, I draw on Judith Butler’s notion of precarity, in explaining the concept of vulnerability. This study uses and concludes that girls are more vulnerable in comparison to boys, and the difference is mostly caused by patriarchy. The study also discovered that adults do not offer enough support to children in vulnerable conditions, so it’s upon the children to find their way out of the uncertainties they find themselves in. In addition, the literary representations also featured political instability as the major cause of vulnerability of a child in society