Pull-down-and-keep-down syndrome

the representation of youth poverty in the novel Little Family, by Ishmael Beah

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the novel Little Family (2020), by Sierra Leonean writer Ishmael Beah, based on the concepts of youth poverty and territoriality, in order to identify forms of youth marginalization in contemporary times and the strategies for the territorialization of this population. The study will be guided by the Principal Component Analysis (PCA) methodology, based on the contributions of Zahreddine & Teixeira (2015), and by the Global History methodology proposed by Conrad (2019), Rousso (2014) and Newell (2006). The core hypothesis of the analysis and confirmed by his study is that youth poverty, represented by Beah in his second novel, is symptomatic of a global capitalist structure that strips youth of power and places them in a site of social invisibility, especially when this population is from the African continent.