Growing Up with God and Empire: A Postcolonial Analysis of 'Missionary Kid' Memoirs

By Stephanie Vandrick

This book analyzes the memoirs of 42 'missionary kids' - the children of North American Protestant missionaries in countries all over the world during the 20th century. Using a postcolonial lens the book explores ways in which the missionary enterprise was part of, or intersected with, the Western colonial enterprise, and ways in which a colonial mindset is unconsciously manifested in these memoirs. The book explores how the memoirists' sites and experiences are exoticized; the missionary kids' likelihood of learning - or not learning - local languages; the missionary families' treatment of servants and other local people; and gender, race and social class aspects of the missionary kids' experiences. Like other Third Culture Kids, the memoirists are migrants, travelers, border-crossers and border-dwellers who alternate between insider and outsider statuses, and their words shed light on the effects of movement and travel on children's lives and development.

• Format: Paperback
• Language: English
• ISBN: 178892231X
• ISBN13: 9781788922319
• Release Date: December 2018
• Publisher: Multilingual Matters Limited
• Length: 141 Pages
• Weight: 0.90 lbs.
• Dimensions: 0.5" x 5.8" x 8.2"