Rethinking Identity and Crisis: Representations of Young Adult Subjectivities in the Fiction of Selected Ugandan Women Writers

Abstract

This study, Rethinking Identity and Crisis: Representations of Young Adult Subjectivities in the Fiction of Selected Ugandan Women Writers, explores how Ugandan female authors negotiate identity, crisis, and selfhood through the lens of youth experience. Focusing on the works of Barbara Kimenye and Mary Karooro Okurut, this examination explores how these writers depict the evolving subjectivities of young adults within shifting sociocultural, political, and gendered contexts. The purpose is to investigate how young protagonists embody and contest tensions between tradition and modernity, individual freedom and communal obligation, and patriarchy and self-determination. Using textual and thematic analysis and drawing on postcolonial feminist and identity theories, the research interprets narrative strategies, character development, and themes of crisis and transformation. Close reading of selected novels reveals how gender, class, and cultural displacement intersect in the shaping of the perceptions of young adult characters. The findings show that both Kimenye and Okurut reimagine youth identity as a site of negotiation and resilience. Their narratives challenge colonial and patriarchal prescriptions of femininity and adulthood, portraying young adult characters who navigate inequality through resistance, self-assertion, and moral renewal. The study argues that crisis, rather than being destructive, becomes a generative force for redefining belonging, agency, and cultural continuity. Although limited to two authors, the research offers new insights into the symbolic economies of youth and gender in Ugandan literature. It contributes to African feminist criticism, Ugandan cultural studies, and youth identity scholarship by highlighting how women writers envision new forms of selfhood amid crisis and change.