Childhood Narratives: N Africa

3 Credits · Level: Graduate, Undergraduate

The course is focused around a core of novels that focus on childhood and coming-of-age in North Africa. The texts all feature young narrators who, by their own admission, see themselves as linguistic or cultural “outsiders” in their home countries of Morocco, Algeria or Tunisia. Using the idea of the outsider as a point of departure, the course will explore the twin themes of individual identity formation and national identity formation, and ask how these themes are intertwined in North African francophone literature. The narrators of these novels are a Jewish child in protectorate Tunisia, a young gay Moroccan man, an Algerian child questioning her gender identity, French-educated students in the Arabized Algerian education system, and an Amazigh (Berber) student in Morocco. Through a discussion of coming of age and feelings of “otherness,” students will be introduced to the cultural diversity of North Africa, as well as the linguistic, social, and personal complexity of narrating childhood.