The Dark Child opens with Camara Laye, the memoir's narrator and protagonist, recalling how he once played with a snake as a small child. Laye's mother scolds him for being so careless and advises him to kill all snakes except one, a shiny black snake who is his father's totem animal and "the spirit of [their] race." Laye learns the snake speaks to his father in dreams, advising him about future events.
When not in school, Laye spends his time observing his father in his metal-working forge. When he works with gold, Laye's father weaves mystical rituals into the smelting process, uttering incantations and petting his guiding spirit snake. Laye is mesmerized by the process, but his mother disapproves of him breathing in the harmful dust in the workshop.
As a child, Laye often travels south to Tindican, a countryside farming community where his grandmother on his mother's side lives. His grandmother showers him with praise and he enjoys playing in the fields with his rural friends. While helping his uncle with the December rice harvest, Laye realizes he is destined to be neither a metal worker nor a farmhand. He panics about the uncertain future that lies beyond his education.
While attending French primary school, Laye becomes infatuated with Fanta, a female friend of his sister's. He also endures merciless bullying at the hands of older boys. Eventually, his friend Kouyaté breaks the code of silence and informs his father about the abuse they are suffering. This decision precipitates an end to the bullying and the resignation of the school's director, who Laye's father assaults during an argument at the school. It turns out that the director had been excusing the behavior of the bullies because their parents were paying him to board them at his house.
As a teenager, Laye takes part in his community's ritual circumcision ceremony. For a week before the procedure, he dances in public with other uncircumcised boys. Eventually they dress in specially made boubou garments and undergo the operation at the same time in the same room. They also stay together in a hut for several weeks while a healer changes the bandages on their penises and makes sure they are improving. Laye then reenters the community, which celebrates his return as a man with a large feast. Laye is happy to be an adult, but he feels grief over the fact his relationship with his mother is forever changed. No longer a boy, he will live in his own hut across from hers, where he used to sleep.
At fifteen, Laye moves in with his uncle in Conakry, the capital city of Guinea. He attends a French-language technical college but spends most of his miserable first year in a hospital. His second year is better as the director of the college changes and Laye feels he is learning valuable things. He falls in love with Marie, a young family friend of his aunts'. His aunts—two women who are both married to and have children with his polygamous uncle—tease them about being a couple, but they are chaste and formal with each other, never acknowledging aloud their love.
After graduating with the best marks on his final exams, Laye accepts an offer to continue his studies in Paris. The decision upsets and enrages his mother, who refuses to accept that her son is leaving her again. However, Laye's father supports the decision and wishes him luck, having known this outcome was inevitable. The memoir ends with Laye on a plane, heading toward his uncertain future in France while he weeps over the people and culture he is leaving behind.
