Lusophone African Short Stories and Poetry after Independence: Decolonial Destinies

(Hardback)

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In 1975, after much resistance, Portugal became the last colonial power to relinquish its colonies on the African continent. The tardiness of Portuguese decolonization in Africa (Cabo Verde, Angola, Mozambique, Guinea Bissau, So Tom e Prncipe) raises critical questions for the emergence of national literary and cultural production in the wake of national independence. Bringing together the works of poets, short story writers, and journalists, this book charts the emergence and evolution of the national literatures of Portugals former African colonies, from 1975 to the present. The aim of this book is to examine the ways in which writers contended with the process of decolonization, forging national, transnational, and diasporic identities through literature while grappling with the legacies and continuities of racial power structures, colonial systems of representation, and the struggles for political sovereignty and social justice. This book will be the first of its kind in English to include canonical, emerging, and previously untranslated authors of poetry and short-form fiction to a new public.

Reviews

Lusophone African Short Stories is an important reading for all of those who are interested in the Portuguese colonial Africa and the emergence and evolution of the national literatures of Portugals former African colonies. Sandra Sousa, Assistant Professor of Portuguese, University of Central

Enhanced by a detailed introduction and biographical notes, this solid and inclusive anthology fills a mounting research and pedagogic need. The collected material ranges from the late colonial period to contemporaneity, comprising 25 writers from 5 Portuguese-speaking African countries. Notably, most selections are available here in English for the first time. Lus Madureira, Professor, African Cultural Studies, University of Wisconsin

The present volume of Lusophone short stories and poetry in English translation is a welcome addition for diversity and inclusion studies generally, and for Lusophone literary studies specifically. Portuguese colonial societies were structured around white supremacy, patriarchal dominance, and coupled with a general contemptif not outright dehumanizationof the indigenous peoples, their cultures, and their societies. In fact, the editors provide an interesting rebuttal to renowned Brazilian sociologist Gilberto Freyres theory of Lusotropicalism, which argued for a more humane racial relational system in the Portuguese colonies Steven Eric Byrd, University of New England; Hispania Volume 105, Number 4, December 2022, pp. 615-616

Author Bio

Lamonte Aidoo is Associate Professor of Romance Studies at Duke University.

Daniel F. Silva is Associate Professor of Luso-Hispanic Studies at Middlebury College