I’m happy to provide a free copy of any of my articles: david.mastey@sta.uwi.edu
2018
“Child Soldier Narratives and the Humanitarian Industry.” Genre, vol. 51, no. 1, April 2018, pp. 81-103.
In this article I examine how the genre of African writing known as child soldier narratives invite readers to reimagine the relationship between Western humanitarianism and its intended recipients by emphasizing the perspectives of the latter. I begin by defining two basic types of humanitarian groups: operational organizations respond to crises with material relief, while advocacy organizations attempt to raise awareness about these crises in order to mobilize support for relief efforts. Operational organizations are represented in the genre as largely incapable of providing meaningful help to communities affected by war: relief aid is routinely stolen or misallocated, while its Western aid workers are often overwhelmed in spite of their best intentions. Yet many of the narratives portray humanitarian advocacy favorably and, in particular, child soldier memoirs serve as a vehicle for advocacy against the practice. While the authors are often viewed with suspicion in communities recovering from war, in the West their unique social identities as ex-child soldiers are privileged. Many become advocates as a result. There are consequences to publicly embracing this identity insofar as it is difficult to transcend, as Ishmael Beah’s experiences has shown. However, generally speaking the genre provides a relatively nuanced view of the relationship between Western humanitarian organizations and their African beneficiaries.
“Child Soldier Narratives and Their War Names.” English Studies, vol. 99, no. 2, 2018, pp. 166-182.
In this essay I examine child soldier stories, one of the most popular and critically successful genres of African writing in the United States in recent years. They are unique in some respects, but many publishers and US readers are already familiar with their most basic themes. The success of the genre owes much to the fact that it resembles an existing book marketing category known as misery literature. Publishers recognize that child soldier stories may (and in some cases do) generate similar levels of interest and profitability. However, I argue that they are not bound by the same strict distinctions between fantasy and reality. Many US readers associate the genre — and the practice of child soldiering more generally — with Africa. Consequently, child soldier stories are treated as evidence of a continent-wide epidemic that largely exists in the imaginations of its US audience.
“The Relative Innocence of Child Soldiers.” Journal of Commonwealth Literature. Online, print forthcoming. doi: 10.1177/0021989417712320
This article concerns the portrayal of childhood innocence — both moral and legal — in the child soldier narrative, a predominantly African genre of writing. I begin with an analysis of how these stories establish the moral innocence of their young characters through prevailing narratological structures that culminate in the loss of this innocence, usually by means of scenes in which child soldiers kill or sexually assault other characters. The purpose of these scenes and subsequent reflections on them by some child soldier characters is not to disabuse readers of their notions of childhood innocence, but rather to heighten awareness of it by drawing explicit attention to it during moments of duress. The narratives do not present innocence prosaically as an abstraction or a plainly-stated character trait (Shklovsky, 2015). Instead, they invite readers to viscerally perceive it (and its inevitable loss) through disturbing portrayals of violence. Scenes of lost innocence also serve an integral plot function in the genre as prerequisites for the rehabilitation of former child soldiers after their decommission. This narrative trajectory emphasizes the essential innocence of the characters in their roles as victimized children. However, in the process it also downplays concerns about their possible culpability as soldiers.
“Rev. of African American Anti-Colonial Thought 1917-1937 by Cathy Bergin.” Canadian Review of Comparative Literature, vol. 45, no. 1, March 2018, pp. 172-174.
2017
“The Adulterated Children of Child Soldier Narratives.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 48, no. 4, 2017, pp. 39-55.
In this article I examine how child soldier narratives address the concept of childhood as it relates to their young protagonists. I begin with a brief examination of the most prominent characteristics that define childhood in North America, the primary target market for these works. I draw on these concepts in my analysis of how the characters mature in their respective texts. The genre presents an alternative (though not preferable) model for childhood development: chronological age is diminished by military rank, the binary opposition between soldiers and civilians replaces graduated social distinctions between adults and children, and war disrupts the ostensibly natural developmental processes. Moreover, the genre suggests that rehabilitation is only possible through relocation to the West. I conclude that although the genre does offer portrayals of more normative childhoods in Africa, these alternative examples are obscured by the sensational depiction of the lost childhoods of child soldier characters.
2016
“Child Soldier Stories and Their Fictions.” Interventions: International Journal of Postcolonial Studies, vol. 18, no. 1, January 2016, pp. 143-158.
In this essay I examine child soldier stories, one of the most popular and critically successful genres of African writing in the United States in recent years. They are unique in some respects, but many publishers and US readers are already familiar with their most basic themes. The success of the genre owes much to the fact that it resembles an existing book marketing category known as misery literature. Publishers recognize that child soldier stories may (and in some cases do) generate similar levels of interest and profitability. However, I argue that they are not bound by the same strict distinctions between fantasy and reality. Many US readers associate the genre – and the practice of child soldiering more generally – with Africa. Consequently, child soldier stories are treated as evidence of a continent-wide epidemic that largely exists in the imaginations of its US audience.
2012
“National Narratives Reconciled in Contemporary Liberian Fiction.” Research in African Literatures, vol. 43, no. 1, February 2012, pp. 151-165.
In this article I examine two contemporary novels, C. William Allen’s The African Interior Mission and Boima Fahnbulleh Jr.’s Behind God’s Back, in the context of postcivil war Liberian society. Both works are set during the preceding 1980 military coup and attempt to cultivate a sense of national identity through a process parallel to that of the recently concluded Truth and Reconciliation Commission. I offer two competing analyses of these narratives, suggesting that the protagonists successfully demonstrate to each other (and potential readers) that multiethnic participation in Liberian society is possible in spite of its troubled history, while also revealing the potentially intractable nature of ethnic conflict. I conclude the article with a reconciliation of these seemingly antithetical positions, that as Bildungsromane their structure and form allows readers to derive meaning from them, and a unified sense of national identity in the process, that the characters cannot fully understand.
“The Way Things Used to Be? William Tubman’s Rhetorical Legacy in Liberia.” Remembering Africa and Its Diasporas, edited by Audra A. Diptee and David V. Trotman, Africa World Press, 2012, pp. 63-82.
In 2010 the Truth and Reconciliation Commission of Liberia (TRC) assembled from expert testimony what it considers to be an ‘accurate’ account of Liberian history that supersedes competing versions. As part of this historical narrative, the TRC identifies antecedents to the recent fourteen-year civil war and emphasizes periods of relative political stability. Many observers agree that the twenty-seven year era of the William Tubman administration (1944-1971) represents an ideal precedent for maintaining peace among the state’s numerous factions. They argue that his success depended on meeting the expectations of two rival groups: ruling-class elites and an emergent indigenous citizenry. In this essay examine the rhetorical strategies Tubman uses to negotiate between these two constituencies, primarily by reinterpreting the country’s history. Specifically, I argue that he draws upon two distinct forms of primitivist discourse in his rhetoric by appealing to an Edenic past characterized by mutual cooperation between the indigenes and black settlers, but also frequently depicting the indigenous population as savages. In so doing, Tubman hoped to simultaneously appease indigenous citizens who sought greater self-determination and mollify the traditional political aristocracy which was unwilling to relinquish its control over the mechanisms of state. First, I concentrate on his representation of the founding of Liberia as a primitivist black utopia. In particular, I examine how he portrays the cooperation between the colonists and indigenous Liberians by using familial language and emphasizing their similarities. He then often contrasts this agreement by describing how indigenes sabotage it, either through foreign manipulation or by their own ‘barbaric’ design. Next, I scrutinize his representation of the contemporary period of stability facilitated by his Unification Programme, which he compares to his idealized version of the past. Once more, he associates the two groups positively in accounts of the origins of the policy and its successes in preventing conflict, expanding rights to indigenes, and integrating them into into civil society. Yet often within the very same speeches he also identifies indigenous citizens as primitive in nature and a danger to national stability. Finally, I conclude by outlining how recent efforts to idealize aspects of the Tubman administration — most notably in testimony at the TRC hearings—parallel his own idyllic account of Liberian history, and that his complex political-linguistic apparatus in fact contributed to the disastrous civil war from which Liberia has only recently recovered.
2010
“Slumming and/as Self-Making in Barack Obama’s Dreams From My Father.” Journal of Black Studies, vol. 40, no. 3, January 2010, pp. 484-501.
This article examines how Barack Obama’s narrative Dreams From My Father functions for a White audience. It argues that the narrative provides potential White readers the opportunity to “slum” alongside Obama in Chicago’s South Side ghettos. More than entertainment, slumming is for many White people an effective means of racial self-making in a process parallel to that undertaken by the narrator. Potential White readers encounter various Black characters as caricatures in the text—for example, the conspiratorial nationalist, the radical preacher—which reinforce their comprehensive generalizations of Blacks (i.e., stereotypes), the primary means by which they comprehend them and also how they understand themselves as White. It argues that the narrative simultaneously interrogates race as a concept and reproduces for potential White readers the dualistic conceptualizations of race that drive racialist thinking and racist behavior.
2007
“Playscripts: A New Method for Analyzing Game Design and Play.” with Jessica Aldred, Robert Biddle, et al, Future Play ’07, ACM, 2007, pp. 205-208.
We propose a methodological framework for game analysis that uses the notion of ‘scripting’ as the basis for game interpretation and design. Drawing upon several disciplines and domains, this paper provides a template for critical analysis by outlining seven forms of scripting at work in games, and how these scripts either complement or compete with each other in various types of games. This system of analysis not only comprises the different technical, social or cognitive scripts that operate within the various modules of any given game, but also provides a method for the comparative study of different games, as well as a framework for building improved scripting and work flow tools for game designers.