초록 열기/닫기 버튼
Wang, Eunchull. “Rwandan Genocide and Colonial Aftereffect: A Study of Uwem Akpan’s ‘My Parents’ Bedroom’.” Studies in English Language and Literature. 42.3 (2016): 61-79. Uwem Akpan’s “My Parents’ Bedroom” is a story told from the-point-of-view of Monique, a nine-year-old girl whose harrowing experience during the Rwandan massacre is almost indescribable. Her Hutu father is driven to kill his own Tutsi wife, otherwise the whole family will be murdered by a blood-thirsty mob. It is a man-made hell in which children are exposed to a most brutal, heinous experience: their own father killing their own mother. Akpan does not merely delineate what happens during the massacre but delves into the Belgian colonial legacy from which the genocide originated. He suggests that the 1994 genocide had a lot to do with Belgian colonialism which exploited racial elements by giving the Tutsi minority hegemony over the Hutu majority. The author delineates from inside Africa what Africans, children in particular, go through during the massacre. Overall, the story is a sustained prayer in the form of a fiction, hoping that the devastating ethnic hatred be lifted from Rwanda. (Chonbuk National University)
