Vulnerability and empowerment of persons with albinism in Tara Sullivan’s <i>Golden Boy</i>

The African albino figure is a narrative trope that concerns both Western and African writers. In this study, I conduct a close reading of Tara Sullivan’s Golden Boy (2013), deploying ideas from disability studies and theories of vulnerability and agency to examine how it empowers its protagonist with albinism. I argue that the narrative employs literary devices, including metaphors of curving and carved statues and elephant poaching, to frame the protagonist’s vulnerability, cultivate his agency, and foster resistance. I demonstrate that the novel negotiates the paradox of cultural representation of PWA, which oscillates between commodification and reclamation. Unlike African-authored texts on the topic, the novel significantly affords the albino figure the means to reclaim his belittled humanity and subjectivity through its deployment of a first-person narration and metaphorical representations of carving under the mentorship of a blind sculptor, Kweli. It juxtaposes carved statues, acts of carving (the protagonist’s metaphors for creative reclamation), with elephant poaching, the metaphor of the destructive commodification of life. The juxtaposition crucially destabilises myths surrounding albinism in Africa and reimagines albinism as a site of resistance and of self-making.