Despite being a memoir and not a novel, Jal's text is both carefully shaped and affectively complex; amenable to a literary reading along its intersecting axes of precarity, protectedness and power. Child soldier texts have become icons of ambiguous precarity in African literary studies. WARchild enlarges this scope in vividly evoking the protected family life of a war-affected child prior to military participation as an actual boy soldier who then looks for refuge and protection in power, brutality and bloodshed. Jal details the forms of precarity impinging on the child during wartime, in the post-war youth's existence as well as the initially short-lived and fragile shelters available to the socially damaged misfit in the long struggle to cope with if not overcome post-war precarities. Although co-authored, the text throughout convincingly articulates Jal's single voice as a powerful witness against and interrogator of war – especially but not exclusively in its incorporation of children into military action. The article traces this delineation of evolving precarity, kinds of protectedness sought, found and tested, and power forms that impinge upon and are entered into by the boy soldier subject.

中文翻译：

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Emmanuel Jal 的 WARchild：一个男孩士兵的故事中的不稳定、保护和权力

尽管是回忆录而不是小说，但 Jal 的文字经过精心设计且情感复杂；适合沿着其不稳定、受保护和权力的交叉轴进行文学阅读。儿童兵文本已成为非洲文学研究中模棱两可的不稳定的象征。WARchild 扩大了这个范围，生动地唤起了一个受战争影响的儿童在参军之前作为一名真正的男孩士兵，然后在权力、野蛮和流血中寻求庇护和保护的受保护家庭生活。Jal 详细描述了战时、战后青年的存在以及最初短暂而脆弱的避难所对儿童的影响，这些避难所在战后长期斗争中应对社会受损的不适应者，以应对如果不能克服战后不稳定。虽然是合着，全文令人信服地表达了日航作为反对战争的有力证人和审讯者的单一声音——特别是但不仅限于将儿童纳入军事行动。这篇文章追溯了这种对不断演变的不稳定、寻求、发现和测试的保护以及冲击和进入男孩士兵主题的权力形式的描述。