Adolescence, Slavery, and the Search for Self in Colonial East Africa in Paradise by Abdulrazak Gurnah

This paper is an attempt to examine the portrayal of adolescence as a personal development and historical forces in late 19th-century East Africa in Abdulrazak Gurnah’s Paradise. Through the journey of Yusuf, who is a twelve-year-old boy sold into debt bondage. The novel discusses adolescence not as a purely a person’s experience but as a political process influenced by slavery, cultural hybridity, and emerging colonial structures. The paper analyzes Yusuf’s confrontation of multiple father figures, shifting social hierarchies, and competing religious and cultural influences. This study shows that Gurnah has complicated traditional narratives of slavery by depicting its roots within pre-colonial African societies while acknowledging its human costs. The research argues that the search for selfhood by Yusuf occurs precisely at the moment when European colonialism begins transforming existing power structures by forcing characters to face new definitions and aspects of civilization and savagery. This paper places Paradise as a significant contribution to postcolonial literature that centers African perspectives on identity formation during colonial transition by examining how adolescence becomes inseparable from historical trauma and cultural negotiation as depicted in the novel.