Living in the Cracks of Apartheid: A Critical Narrative Analysis of Resilience, Hope, and Cultural Trauma in The Born Free Generation of South Africa

The generation of South African youth known as the Born Free generation are the first to be born after the abolition of apartheid in 1994. Although they were born as free individuals, they are struggling with economic disparity and social inequality. Cultural trauma theory (Alexander et al., 2004) suggests that this generation may have inherited the trauma suffered by their forebears during apartheid, a time of institutionalized discrimination, inequality, and poverty based on racial classification. This study examined the lived experiences of a particular group of Born Frees: youths who submitted expressive poetry to be published in a series of collections by the Bokamoso Youth Centre in Winterveldt, South Africa. The examination was done in the context of hope theory (Snyder, 1989) and the theory of narrative therapy theory (White & Epston, 1991). A total of 74 poems were examined in terms of organizational structure and overall content. Dominant and emerging themes were explored in the poetry via three rounds of coding. Dominant narratives and counter narratives were also identified. Lastly, an analysis of the use of personal pronouns and possessive adjectives was conducted.;The major findings of the study revealed seven prominent themes in the poetry: (1) identity; (2) environment; (3) emotional expression; (4) gender; (5) heroes; (6) time; and (7) questioning. These findings indicated that the youth used their poetry as a means of expressing multiple identities. They wrote primarily from the first person singular point of view, but also employed 'in-group' pronouns ("we," "our," and "us") to refer to their collectivity identity. The poems detailed their struggles with poverty, violence, domestic violence and crime, but they also articulated the notion that these experiences have not defined their identities or limited their desire to thrive. Through poetry, the youths allowed themselves to be vulnerable and thus the content and language of their poems revealed a wide breadth of emotion. The implicit and explicit content of the poetry suggested that the Born Free generation have struggled in their ability to counter patriarchal customs and values that maintain unequal power distributions between genders. The poems also suggested that they have used poetry to process grief over the loss of beloved local and national heroes. When referring to time, the youth primarily wrote in the present tense, rarely referring to the past and with few references to the future. They questioned the status quo and identified themselves as leaders.;Keywords: cultural trauma theory, narrative therapy, hope theory, South Africa, Born Free generation, critical narrative analysis.