Violence in African Young Adult Fiction

Abstract

Scholars in the field of young adult fiction agree about the influence of reading on young adults, with research on young adult fiction showing its influence on vocabulary and young adults’ views on bullying and teen violence (Alsup, 2010; Campbell, 2020). What is disputed is the place of violence in young adult fiction. While some scholars argue for the inclusion of violence in fiction (Franzak &Noll, 2006; Piotrowski &Harper, 2013), others argue for the exclusion of violence in young adult fiction (Campbell, 2010). This thesis provides insights into the portrayal of violence in African young adult fiction, and how young adults make meaning of the violence they are exposed to in the story books they read. The research follows two main trajectories. First, I undertake a close reading of a range of texts to track the ways in which novelists employ dominant discourses of violence to depict perpetrators and victims of violence. Secondly, I conduct a survey to examine Ghanaian young adults’ perceptions of violence and how they make meaning of violence in the story books they read. The findings show that as a reflection of the occurrence of violence in society on the one hand and for literary purposes on the other, violence manifests in many forms in African young adult fiction. The findings also show that Ghanaian young adults are able to grapple with the violence in the storybooks they read using their personal experiences.