Language plays a pivotal role in shaping social norms regarding interpersonal violence in Sierra Leone. Language is a structure of meaning that shapes perception of self and others. Linguistic practices are rooted in inferences contributing to understanding connections, including causality. Linguistic categories reflect and are influenced by social categories, making language an arena of political struggle. Terminologies for violence have evolved over time, influenced by historical forces, public discourse, and legal reforms. While legal discourse tends to cluster, local perceptions differentiate between ‘normal and acceptable’ and ‘unacceptable’ forms, considering intent, outcome, and potential for reconciliation. Men and women both engage in violence but in different ways, influenced by specific language and metaphorical expressions. Language shapes the moral economy of relationships, bridging community perceptions, state discourses, and external influences. Studying interpersonal violence within its cultural and linguistic context can therefore provide deep understanding.

This chapter examines three novels: Wendy Law-Yone’s Irrawaddy Tango, Lucy Cruickshanks’s The Road to Rangoon, and Charmaine Craig’s Miss Burma, and two works of life writing: Pascal Khoo Thwe’s From the Land of Green Ghosts and Aung San Suu Kyi’s Freedom from Fear. The fictional works unravel a world of insurgent figures that undergo a constant mitosis and metamorphosis, from lovers to rebels, from fathers to national fathers, and from husbands to dictators. The chapter discusses concepts of intimate violence, affective (in)justice, inherited violence, and intimate sovereignties. Unlike the soft or slow violence of poverty and precarity, intimate violence occurs in familiar sites and spaces, against a familiar enemy. The readings unveil how the intimate violence is bound by sovereign desires of armed secession. The second part pairs two readings, Aung San Suu Kyi’s Freedom from Fear and Thwe’s From the Land of Green Ghosts, offering a contrasting perspective on the interplay of intimacy, affects, violence and sovereign desires. If Suu Kyi’s narrative of defending the nation through militaristic means can be read as an extension of national autobiography then Thwe’s defense of tribal autonomy through affective insurgency can be read as the formative aspect of what I call subalter-nation.