Resistance and Voice: A Postcolonial Reading of Beverley Naidoo's The Other Side of Truth

Abstract

In this study, the intertwined themes of voice, resistance, and identity formation in Beverley Naidoo's The Other Side of Truth are explored in relation to how child protagonists resist authoritarian power structures and reconstruct selfhood in contexts of trauma and displacement. A qualitative research design, combined with close textual readings guided by postcolonial literary criticism and trauma theory, examined narrative structures, symbolic geographies, and character development to study how such literary means provide tools of resistance. The findings reveal that narrative voices serve as a form of political resistance. Through this recounting of truth, symbolic memory, language adaptation, and intercultural negotiations, Sade and Femi re-establish agency in a novel that undermines the hegemonic narrative and empowers the marginalized voices of children as political actors. This study indicates the pedagogical and political power of postcolonial children's literature, insisting to raise critical consciousness in young readers. Thus, storytelling becomes a healing act and a mode of political engagement. The present investigation may be somewhat restricted, concentrating as it does on one novel with a qualitative approach, thereby impeding extension of results.