\\ READER 2\\
Radical
Agendas: Beverley Naidoo, The Other Side of Truth (2000)
INTRODUCTION:
P 330-331
v Beverley
Naidoo's The Other Side of Truth, published in 2000, is an exemplum of social
realist fiction with a political agenda. A white South African
exile to England.
v The
novel takes on the task of depicting children who struggle against injustice
and other difficulties in the persons of two Nigerian refugee children who
arrive in Britain seeking safety after the
political assassination of their mother and the enforced disappearance of their
journalist father.
v Her novel aim to reveal the impact of the wider society and
its politics on the lives of
young characters, and are calculated to move the
child-reader beyond concerns, centred on their own immediate lives and choices
to consider the workings of society at large.
v Political
oppression, war, displacement, migration and forging a new life as a refugee are the topical concerns of The
Other Side of Truth.
v The innocence of the migrant child protagonists is
juxtaposed with the bullying meted out to them by their peers in a British
school and with the harshness of a
bureaucratic state focused on controlling immigration to the point of
committing gross injustice.
v Before being rescued into a happy ending, the children
are successively let down by welfare and social systems, adults, and other
children in a story that challenges child-readers to empathise with outsiders
and to question the fairness and humanity of the society in which they live.
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Some notes from the
First Essay by Naidoo:
v
Information
through letters, phone calls, news items in relation to their father. Past/dreams
flashbacks photos nightmares - a
way of communicating their background,
including memories of stable family, grandparents, cousins, etc.
Environmental issue linked to political crisis and trauma.
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ما من عبد مسلم يدعو لأخيه بظهر الغيب إلا قال الملك ولك بمثل.
 INTRODUCTION: P 330-331 v Beverley N...){kind=link}