Abstract This article critically discusses youth representations in MJ Mngadi’s two novels, Imiyalezo (1978) and Ifa Ngukufa (2001). While the portrayal of characters in novels and short stories is the subject that is addressed by many scholars in the study of African literature (Sibiya, 2021), the depictions of youth identities remain a scantily explored phenomenon. Based on the textual method and anchored on two isiZulu phrases, ‘angiyena ugogo wakho’ [I am not your grandmother] and ‘angiyona insangu’ [I am not marijuana], and the notion of understanding the self in terms of the other or the difference (Pratt, 1985; Woodward, 1997) as a conceptual framework, this paper asserts that Mngadi depicts youth in terms of the difference. This renders the youth identities double, multiple, and contradictory simultaneously. The mentioned isiZulu phrases are explained in the introduction and juxtaposed to the notion of identity and the difference.

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