what is Mozambican literature?
Yes, it is well known that there is a postcolonial, Portuguese-speaking Mozambican literature, illustrated by one name at least, Mia Couto. But how Mia Couto is to the literary traditions of the country is much more difficult question. There is a plurality of languages that the Portuguese used to call landins, and this is what Mia Couto tries to reflect; a lot of his literary fortune had been made through incrustation of transcontinental Portuguese with all those local ingredients. But he wasn't the first to do so. Much more persuasive, in my opinion, is the use of Ronga in the poetry of José Craveirinha (for example in Karingana Ua Karingana, 1974). Ronga was indeed his maternal language (i.e. the language of his African mother), while Mia Couto is a blue-eyed descendant of Portuguese settlers, with no profound connection with any African language in particular. This is why his translingual incrustration remained on the surface of his literature, as a mere maniera he abandoned at a certain stage of his writerly career.
On the other hand, the country has a long history, both colonial and non-colonial. Already at the time when the Portuguese first arrived here during their circumnavigation of Africa, in search of the maritime passage to India, the country formed a periphery of the Islamic world, with its own traditions of literacy, Sufi brotherhoods, etc.
The usual narration of the history of Lusophone Mozambican literature (which, as I would stress, is just one of many potential narrations) starts in the 19th century with the instalation of the first printing press and the formation of an elite of assimilados, i.e. Africans who, through aculturation, gained the status formalized and recognized by the colonial empire in the framework of a law of exception called a portaria do assimilado (1917). This culture - one of many, never enough stress on this point - was centred in the capital of the colony, Lourenco Marques (the present-day city of Maputo). It found its expression in the emergence of periodicals such as O Africano (1908) and O Brado Africano (1918), founded by the assimilado brothers Joao and José Albasini. They defended the cause of writing in Ronga and alphabetization of the African population. Joao Albasini wrote also an autobiographical, ultraromantic book O Livro da Dor (1925). The same metropolitan poetics shaped, to a large degree, the first Mozambican poetry, created by Rui de Noronha (1909-1943).
In the 1940s, in sharp contrast to the former generation following the European aesthetic codes and aspiring to Portuguese citizenship, a group of new writers connected to the journal Itinerário (1941-1955) was ready to reclaim their own Mozambicanity. The rise of their awareness took concomittantly a litterary and nacionalistic turn, synthonised with similar movements in Angola (the generation of Mensagem) and Cabo Verde (the generation of Claridade). The members of the new group searched for global inspirations outside the metropolis, be it in the emergent realism of Brazilian Nordeste, and took their distance in relation to the existing patterns of colonial literature legitimizing the presence of Portuguese colonizers and exploring the subalternity of the Africans. As an example of Mozambican colonial literature, one may cite the novel A Neta de Jazira, by Maria Beira (1957). On the other hand, the generation of Itinerário wrote a poetry preoccupied with sociopolitical problems, voicing the revolt against the injustice and symbolic oppression of the colonialism, and searching for ethical and aesthetic peculiarity of Africa. Among the major names, there are Fonseca Amaral, Noémia de Sousa, José Craveirinha, Orlando Mendes, Aníbal Aleluia, Rui Knopfli, and Rui Nogar. This decolonial poetry contributed to the exacerbated nationalism of the insurgents and the beginning of colonial war (1964) that found its expression in the unsophisticated forms of the so called poesia de combate ('fight poetry').
In the domain of prose of the decade of 1960, a single short story stands out: Nós matamos o Cao Tinhoso, by Luís Bernardo Honwana (1964). Yet the decade also brought Portagem, by Orlando Mendes (1966), often considered as the first truly Mozambican novel.
The period of growing complexity and maturity of Mozambican literature started in the 1970s with the project of Caliban (a short-lived periodical with only four issues, 1971-1972), created by Grabato Dias and Rui Knopfli. The period of revolutionary upheaval, rich in political literature and polemics, lasts till mid-1980s, a moment of a new lease of creative freedom. The literary life of this period is connected with the journal Charrua (1984) and the newly founded Association of Mozambican Writers (AEMO). This generation gains already some international notoriety, with such names as Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, the author of Ualalapi (1987), Eduardo White, Armando Artur, Marcelo Panguana, Suleiman Cassamo, and others. The following decade will bring the consacration of even more visible names, such as Mia Couto and Paulina Chiziane, without forgetting less notorious, yet locally important writers such as Luis Carlos Patraquim, Aldino Muianga, Filimone Meigos, Nelson Saúte. The period is also rich in poetry, created by Heliodoro Baptista, Guita Jr., Amin Nordine and Adelino Timóteo.
The beginning of the new millennium is the period of the incessant novelistic work, marked not only by the critically acclaimed books of Paulina Chiziane such as O sétimo juramento (2000) and Niketche: Uma história de poligamia (2002) but also Palestra para um morto, by Suleiman Cassamo (2000), Meledina: a história duma prostituta, by Aldino Muianga (2004) or Campo de Transito, by Joao Paulo Borges Coelho (2007).
Finally, what may be considered a recent revelation in Mozambican literature is the poetry of Sónia Sultuane and the fiction of Awaji Malunga.
On the other hand, the country has a long history, both colonial and non-colonial. Already at the time when the Portuguese first arrived here during their circumnavigation of Africa, in search of the maritime passage to India, the country formed a periphery of the Islamic world, with its own traditions of literacy, Sufi brotherhoods, etc.
The usual narration of the history of Lusophone Mozambican literature (which, as I would stress, is just one of many potential narrations) starts in the 19th century with the instalation of the first printing press and the formation of an elite of assimilados, i.e. Africans who, through aculturation, gained the status formalized and recognized by the colonial empire in the framework of a law of exception called a portaria do assimilado (1917). This culture - one of many, never enough stress on this point - was centred in the capital of the colony, Lourenco Marques (the present-day city of Maputo). It found its expression in the emergence of periodicals such as O Africano (1908) and O Brado Africano (1918), founded by the assimilado brothers Joao and José Albasini. They defended the cause of writing in Ronga and alphabetization of the African population. Joao Albasini wrote also an autobiographical, ultraromantic book O Livro da Dor (1925). The same metropolitan poetics shaped, to a large degree, the first Mozambican poetry, created by Rui de Noronha (1909-1943).
In the 1940s, in sharp contrast to the former generation following the European aesthetic codes and aspiring to Portuguese citizenship, a group of new writers connected to the journal Itinerário (1941-1955) was ready to reclaim their own Mozambicanity. The rise of their awareness took concomittantly a litterary and nacionalistic turn, synthonised with similar movements in Angola (the generation of Mensagem) and Cabo Verde (the generation of Claridade). The members of the new group searched for global inspirations outside the metropolis, be it in the emergent realism of Brazilian Nordeste, and took their distance in relation to the existing patterns of colonial literature legitimizing the presence of Portuguese colonizers and exploring the subalternity of the Africans. As an example of Mozambican colonial literature, one may cite the novel A Neta de Jazira, by Maria Beira (1957). On the other hand, the generation of Itinerário wrote a poetry preoccupied with sociopolitical problems, voicing the revolt against the injustice and symbolic oppression of the colonialism, and searching for ethical and aesthetic peculiarity of Africa. Among the major names, there are Fonseca Amaral, Noémia de Sousa, José Craveirinha, Orlando Mendes, Aníbal Aleluia, Rui Knopfli, and Rui Nogar. This decolonial poetry contributed to the exacerbated nationalism of the insurgents and the beginning of colonial war (1964) that found its expression in the unsophisticated forms of the so called poesia de combate ('fight poetry').
In the domain of prose of the decade of 1960, a single short story stands out: Nós matamos o Cao Tinhoso, by Luís Bernardo Honwana (1964). Yet the decade also brought Portagem, by Orlando Mendes (1966), often considered as the first truly Mozambican novel.
The period of growing complexity and maturity of Mozambican literature started in the 1970s with the project of Caliban (a short-lived periodical with only four issues, 1971-1972), created by Grabato Dias and Rui Knopfli. The period of revolutionary upheaval, rich in political literature and polemics, lasts till mid-1980s, a moment of a new lease of creative freedom. The literary life of this period is connected with the journal Charrua (1984) and the newly founded Association of Mozambican Writers (AEMO). This generation gains already some international notoriety, with such names as Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, the author of Ualalapi (1987), Eduardo White, Armando Artur, Marcelo Panguana, Suleiman Cassamo, and others. The following decade will bring the consacration of even more visible names, such as Mia Couto and Paulina Chiziane, without forgetting less notorious, yet locally important writers such as Luis Carlos Patraquim, Aldino Muianga, Filimone Meigos, Nelson Saúte. The period is also rich in poetry, created by Heliodoro Baptista, Guita Jr., Amin Nordine and Adelino Timóteo.
The beginning of the new millennium is the period of the incessant novelistic work, marked not only by the critically acclaimed books of Paulina Chiziane such as O sétimo juramento (2000) and Niketche: Uma história de poligamia (2002) but also Palestra para um morto, by Suleiman Cassamo (2000), Meledina: a história duma prostituta, by Aldino Muianga (2004) or Campo de Transito, by Joao Paulo Borges Coelho (2007).
Finally, what may be considered a recent revelation in Mozambican literature is the poetry of Sónia Sultuane and the fiction of Awaji Malunga.
I have readMia Couto, Mulheres de cinzas (2015), A confissão da leoa (2012), O Último voo do flamingo (2000), Um rio chamado tempo, uma casa chamada terra (2002)
Paulina Chiziane, Niketche: uma história de poligamia (2001) Luís Bernardo Honwana, Nós matamos o Cão-Tinhoso (1964) |
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