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The power of Nommo: the case of African literature in Portuguese language

2009; Taylor & Francis; Volume: 4; Issue: 3 Linguagem: Inglês

10.1080/17447140903395019

1747-6615

Ana Maria Monteiro-Ferreira,

Literature, Culture, and Criticism

Abstract Communication and literary practices in the Portuguese-speaking countries of Africa are extremely significant and related to the general movement of the renaissance of African culture. Highlighted by an Afrocentric discussion of Sleepwalking Land by Mia Couto, the aim of this study is to give evidence of the common and particular characteristics of these literatures under the Portuguese colonial rule and identify some of the major problems that the use of a colonial language entails in the process of reclaiming the African identity. Keywords: cultural identitylanguage dominancelinguistic imperialismAfrican languagesAfrocentric theoryOrature Notes 1. Países Africanos de Língua Oficial Portuguesa: African Countries of Portuguese Official Language, an organization which includes Brazil but whose African literary tradition will not be addressed here because its geographical and historical conditions make it a distinct experience. 2. Polícia Internacional e de Defesa do Estado-Direcção Geral de Segurança: International and State Defense Police-General Security Directorate. Designed after the German-Nazi Gestapo, PIDE was its Portuguese equivalent in structure, methods, and functionality with extended influence over the independence movements of Angola and Mozambique. 3. My translation from the Portuguese. 4. Comunidade dos Países de Língua Portuguesa: Community of Portuguese-Speaking Countries. 5. Coined in the Portuguese colonial environment, the term denotes both the geographical and cultural space where the Portuguese language is spoken around the world. It implies the notion that the eight following countries (Angola, Brazil, Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau, Mozambique, S. Tomé, Principe, and East-Timor) that share a common colonial past under Portuguese domination also share a common cultural identity built upon the use of the Portuguese language recognized as a linguistic unit with local variations. 6. My translation from the Portuguese. 7. Frente de Libertação de Moçambique: Liberation Front of Mozambique. 8. Compare the following quotation from New Statesman's review ‘To read Mia Couto is to encounter a peculiar African sensibility, a writer of fluid, fragmentary narratives.’ with The New Internationalist's under Note 5. 9. I found it appropriate to quote here The New Internationalist review on Sleepwalking Land: ‘In Sleepwalking Land we see a writer of extraordinary talent beginning to construct, from the rubble and the carnage, an alternative narrative of his country.’ 10. Actually the Portuguese word used by the author – cipaio – conceives a much deeper colonizing concept: it is a particular kind of policeman because he is a black man who has put himself to the colonizers’ service in oppressing his own African people. 11. Here again the translator misses the importance of independence to Africa. Mia Couto wrote it with capital letter. 12. Brokshaw's translation is betraying the original text. Actually the sentence has an opposite meaning. I believe it is a result of the translator's western perspective for whom the African worldview depicted in this sentence does not make sense. 13. Muidinga could no longer walk, read, write, or remember his name before the beginning of the story.