ABSTRACT
The starting point of this chapter is the discrepancy between the large variety of first-person child narratives contemporary British fiction offers for adults and the surprisingly homogenous ways in which they have been theorised thus far in literary criticism. Despite the current popularity of the constructivist paradigm in the study of childhood, most narratological criticism approaches the child narrator solely in terms of credibility, a mode of enquiry that ultimately relies on essentialist and binary notions of childhood and adulthood. Using Stephen Kelman’s best-seller Pigeon English (2011), about a young migrant boy from Ghana, as an example, this chapter aims to illustrate how first-person child narrators in contemporary British fiction can be fruitfully approached from a constructivist perspective. Instead of asking whether Harri Opoku, Kelman’s 11-year-old protagonist and narrator, has an authentic voice, this chapter outlines how Pigeon English constructs Harri’s voice and which assumptions are made about childhood in this very process. Taking into consideration that Kelman’s novel was marketed as a politically engaged work that aims to draw attention to the precarity and violence many children face in contemporary England, this chapter pays attention to the ethical functions of Harri’s narrative voice and point of view.
