Multiculturalism in Irish and Cameroon Children’s Literature

Abstract

The “new Irish” arrivals since the 1990s resulting to rapidly multilingual, multiethnic, and heterogeneous growth, and the escalation of the Anglophone Crisis in Cameroon pushed the Irish and Cameroon governments, politicians, influencers and writers into promoting inclusion and multicultural equity. This article examines contemporary Irish and Cameroonian Children's literature as one of such platforms for the spreading of the education and the spirit of multiculturalism in Ireland and in Cameroon.  Drawing from a number of children’s writings by Irish and Cameroonian writers, the article discusses the intricate weaving of a number of different cultural and philosophical visions inherent in a child’s world, thereby highlighting the role children’s literature plays in promoting cultural diversity and social justice in contemporary Ireland and Cameroon. Using new historicism as a theoretical framework, the article interprets relationships, interactions and viewpoints of characters (mostly children) from diverse backgrounds, to show how writers discourage mono-cultural viewpoints and ‘othering’ of minority groups. As the paper demonstrates, the various young Irish-born and the “new Irish” on the one hand, and the semi-Bantu and the Eastern Nigritic on the other hand are in collision between the familiar and the unknown, their origin and the new found land as they struggle with questions of national unity and community bonding in the twenty-first century.  The work therefore presents this subgenre of literature as representative of scenarios for exploring issues of belonging, difference, migration and nationhood.

Keywords: diversity, living together, children literature, social justice, multiculturalism