Childhood, inter-species kinship and the oceanic Weird in Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s The House of Rust

This article reads Khadija Abdalla Bajaber’s novel The House of Rust (2021) as an example of the oceanic weird that reimagines inter-species kinship via the child. Bringing the blue humanities and childhood studies into dialogue, it explores how the oceanic weird “submerges” gendered and racialised discourses of childhood forged in the Anthropocene in the temporal and spatial dynamics of the ocean. Childhood in flux enables new forms of ecological care and kinship to emerge. The article explores the potential of inter-species kinship to address the traumas of colonialism and climate crisis and to counter posthuman critiques that situate the child as an avatar of the human destruction of the planet. It argues that Bajaber’s novel facilitates a confrontation with the unfathomable nature of ecological crisis that is relevant beyond the Indian Ocean region, articulating the global importance of reconceptualising childhood and children’s agency in fighting for climate justice.