More Than a Victim: Childhood Resilience in Malik Sajad’s Munnu

Representations of children growing up in Kashmir dwell exclusively on scarred childhoods and lost innocence. This chapter studies Malik Sajad’s graphic memoir, Munnu to foreground childhood resilience in the face of violence in Kashmir. The paper problematizes the dominant construction of childhood in militarized zones by exploring the complex characterization and creative agency of Munnu’s child protagonist. Growing up in militarized Kashmir, Munnu draws upon cultural resources, artwork, familial structures to cope with trauma and loss. Even though the socio-cultural security needed for a child to flourish is absent in Kashmir, Munnu pieces together a childhood using his creative intelligence. In reading Munnu, this paper intervenes in normative representations of childhood in militarized zones arguing for a more enabling intervention.