Gender reconstructions and youth identity formation in Kenyan youth fiction

Compared to the twentieth century, the twenty-first century has witnessed significant reconstruction and redefinition of gender identities. The reconstructions, influenced by gender performativity, produces the fragmentation of youth identities. Such fragmentations have been explored in artistic works where portrayals of young adults demonstrate that the youth are under pressure to mimic the world around them, a situation that often leads to internal conflict, self-hatred, and shame. This article examines how selected Kenyan literary writers illuminate the dynamics of gendered identity reconstructions. The article interrogates formation of youth social identities as depicted in Florence Mbaya’s Sunrise at Midnight (2014), Bill Rutto’s Death Trap (2005), and Carolyne Adalla’s Confessions of an Aids Victim (1993). Hemmed up in a high information digital global world, the represented youth perform certain identities to acquire intelligibility amongst their peers. As a powerful prism into cultural identities, youth fiction reveals as it chastises delineated gender roles which generate identity fragmentations. The article argues that triangulating resistance against cultural interpellation, role modeling, and feminist quest heroism in a critique of young adult fiction offers significant insights into gender identity fragmentation.