Chapter 8

Reclaiming children’s narratives

The chapter reads A Bend in Time: Writings by Children on the COVID-19 Pandemic (2020) to examine literature written by youth as a political act and a reclamation of their literary space, in this case by urban children who use their privilege and voice to comment on social issues of climate change, poverty, healthcare. They display a diverse and widely ranging vision with a developing sense of activism, particularly at a historic time such as the pandemic, and I propose, draw their own definitions of nation and inclusive nationhoods. This chapter considers the role of adults in creating space for agentic youth to reimagine the nation, in its ongoing present and its possible future, in crisis time. The dynamics of allyship shared between the adult publishers and the child authors are examined through publisher interviews and are read as an act of collective and inter-generational resistance against hegemonies in traditional children’s publishing in post-Independence India where children were recipients of nationalistic ideologies.