Reading: None yet (background week).

Focus:
- Historical context: West African civil wars, child soldiers.
- Author background (Uzodinma Iweala, Nigerian-American, Harvard, debut novel).
- The politics of representation: outsider telling an African war story.

Activities:
- Read/watch short articles or NGO reports on child soldiers (e.g., UNICEF).
- Class discussion: What do we expect from a novel about war told through a child’s eyes?

Reading: Chapters 1–2.

Focus:
- Agu’s narrative voice (non-standard English, fragmented grammar).
- Point of view: how voice conveys trauma and innocence.

Activities:
- Close reading of Agu’s first description of the war.
- Language workshop: Compare a passage from Agu’s narration to a more conventional prose style — how does the effect change?
- Journal response: How do you “hear” Agu’s voice?

Reading: Chapters 3–4.

Focus:
- How Agu is recruited into the militia.
- Loss of childhood and initiation into violence.

Activities:
- Timeline exercise: Map Agu’s journey from village boy to soldier.
- Discussion: Is Agu making choices, or is he being coerced?
- Historical parallel: Compare Agu’s experience with real testimonies of child soldiers.

Reading: Chapters 5–6.

Focus:
- Representation of violence and dehumanization.
- How trauma appears in Agu’s voice and silences.

Activities:
- Guided close reading of a violent passage (handled sensitively, with trigger warnings).
- Small group discussion: What strategies does Iweala use to make readers confront violence without turning away?
- Creative writing: Rewrite a scene from the perspective of a witness or civilian.

Reading: Chapters 7–8.

Focus:
- The Commandant as both father figure and abuser.
- Power, manipulation, and exploitation.

Activities:
- Character study: Build a chart of how Agu describes the Commandant vs. how readers interpret him.
- Debate: Is the Commandant a symbolic figure (representing war, corruption, etc.) or a psychologically complex character?

Reading: Chapters 9–10.

Focus:
- Agu’s shifting sense of self.
- Survivor’s guilt, memory, and forgetting.

Activities:
- Discussion: Can Agu still think of himself as a child?
- Compare Agu’s inner voice with external perceptions of child soldiers (UN reports, film clips).
- Journal prompt: Is remembering trauma necessary for healing?

Reading: Chapters 11–12 (end of novel).

Focus:
- Agu’s reflections in rehabilitation.
- Ambiguity of ending (healing vs. haunting).

Activities:
- Roundtable: Does the ending offer hope?
- Comparative analysis: Novel vs. Cary Fukunaga’s Beasts of No Nation (2015 film).
- Begin working on final projects.

Reading: Review selected passages.

Focus:
- Pulling themes together: innocence, trauma, language, memory, power.

Activities:
- Group presentations on themes (violence, identity, representation, human rights).
- Final essay workshop.
- Closing discussion: What responsibility does literature have in representing real-world suffering?