what is Angolan literature?
The Lusophone literature of Angola stands out in its own global linguistic area, with such postcolonial authors as Pepetela, Agualusa, and - in a new generation - Ondjaki. Especially the most recent literature from Angola has a pronounced Afrocosmopolitan flavour. Yet it is important to remember that this literary universe is deeply rooted in multilingual, oral traditions. Apart from Portuguese, there are five major Bantu tongues spoken in Angola: Kimbundu, Umbundu, Kikongo, Chokwe and Ovambo, each of them cherishing a rich oral tradition. No wonder that storytelling had a strong influence on Angolan literature all along its complex colonial - decolonial - postcolonial cycle. The African life and poverty was often treated as a matter of narration that balanced humour and dignity in the description of episodes that might be treated as images of destitution and abasement, like in that story from the volume Luuanda, by José Luandino Vieira, where a pregnant woman, moved by the urgency related to her condition, tries to acquire an egg. The fight for independence from Portuguese rule (1961-1974) played a crucial role in shaping Angolan literature. Writers became actively involved in the political struggle, using their works to critique colonial oppression and advocate for national liberation. Some authors, like Agostinho Neto, were not only prominent literary figures but also key political leaders.
The decolonial war, passing without a rupture of continuity into a postcolonial one, offered aboundant matter for writers. As it was often written by white Africans, it often dealt with the complex relations between colonizers and colonized forming the same family line. Such is the case of Alexandre Semedo, the silent patriarch of Pepetela's Yaka. Also Jose Eduardo Agualusa treated the armed conflict as an occasion to portraying the complexity of human circumstances. On the other hand, due to the civil war that followed independence, many Angolan writers went into exile, contributing to a body of diaspora literature. These works often reflect on the experiences of displacement, loss, and the challenges of maintaining cultural identity in foreign lands.
Contemporary Angolan literature also addresses gender dynamics and social issues. Women writers, such as Ana Paula Tavares, have contributed significantly to the literary scene, offering perspectives on gender roles, relationships, and the impact of societal norms.
Kraków, February 2024.
The decolonial war, passing without a rupture of continuity into a postcolonial one, offered aboundant matter for writers. As it was often written by white Africans, it often dealt with the complex relations between colonizers and colonized forming the same family line. Such is the case of Alexandre Semedo, the silent patriarch of Pepetela's Yaka. Also Jose Eduardo Agualusa treated the armed conflict as an occasion to portraying the complexity of human circumstances. On the other hand, due to the civil war that followed independence, many Angolan writers went into exile, contributing to a body of diaspora literature. These works often reflect on the experiences of displacement, loss, and the challenges of maintaining cultural identity in foreign lands.
Contemporary Angolan literature also addresses gender dynamics and social issues. Women writers, such as Ana Paula Tavares, have contributed significantly to the literary scene, offering perspectives on gender roles, relationships, and the impact of societal norms.
Kraków, February 2024.
I have readPepetela, Yaka
José Eduardo Agualusa, O vendedor dos passados, O ano em que Zumbi tomou o Rio Ondjaki, Os da minha rua Ryszard Kapuściński, Jeszcze dzień życia (1975) |
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I have written |
o paraíso e outros infernos |
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Certainly I know a couple of things about Angolan literature; it makes part of my Lusitanist profession. I've written a couple of texts on Ondjaki and Agualusa. And now, staying in Lisbon for the pandemic, I try to put this knowledge up-to-date, hopefully having some new texts in view. This is why I bought this book, O Paraíso e Outros Infernos, although I immediately felt a bit sorry; I thought it would be a novel. It is a sort of diary, quite close to the genre I cultivate myself in my online journal. A bit more developed, time consuming; of course, if he could hope to publish it in volume later on, it was a good investment. While I write mainly to keep the track of my own intellectual and psychological progress.
Agualusa's notes cover largely the year 2015, in which some innocent people were imprisoned, allegedly for preparing a coup d'état in Angola. The writer speaks for them, gives voice for their hunger strike. But he also speaks of Kalaf Epalanga, and of that moment in which Angolan new rich bough properties in the ex-metropolis. Getting rich and having democracy are two distinct things that does not necessarily come together. Some of those things he says come in the direction of my own transcolonial thinking and what I call the new horizontal diagram of relationships, instead of the old, hierarchical diagram internalised by the colonial and post-colonial subalterns. He speaks of "horizontal Lusophony", which is exactly what I want to study. Lisbon, 9.05.2020. |
