“It was as if I had become an Orphan Twice Over”: Orphanhood in O Tibete de África

Authors

  • Patrícia Isabel Martinho Ferreira Brown University Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies

DOI:

https://doi.org/10.35520/mulemba.2017.v9n17a11637

Keywords:

orphan, decolonization, return, trauma, Margarida Paredes.

Abstract

Working as a countercurrent to the imperial rhetoric around the patriarchal family and home, the literary trope of the orphan offers a critical view of the Portuguese colonial and postcolonial experience, emphasizing the anxieties and traumas that were felt in the context of the end of the Empire, the Decolonization process and the return of settlers and their descendants to Portugal. The experience between worlds (the Portuguese and the African), which characterizes the trajectory of the protagonist of O Tibete de África -- a novel published by Margarida Paredes in 2006 -- manifests itself in a state of double orphanhood stemming from her father's death and subsequent disintegration of the family, as well as from the loss of her place of origin - Angola. This essay delves into this orphan journey, which has obvious symbolic repercussions.

Author Biography

Patrícia Isabel Martinho Ferreira, Brown University Department of Portuguese and Brazilian Studies

Patrícia I. Martinho Ferreira é licenciada em Estudos Portugueses (2005), mestre em Teoria e Análise da Narrativa (2009) pela Faculdade de Letras da Universidade de Coimbra (Portugal) e mestre em Ensino do Português como Língua Estrangeira (2012) pela Faculdade de Letras da Universidade do Porto (Portugal). Presentemente, frequenta o doutorado em Estudos Portugueses e Brasileiros na Universidade de Brown (EUA). Tem apresentado trabalhos nas áreas das literaturas portuguesa, brasileira e africanas de língua portuguesa.

References

BERTHIN, Christine. Gothic Hauntings: Melancholy Crypts and Textual Ghosts. Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2010.

FALCONI, Jessica. O sal da terra. Buala. 2 ago. 2011. Disponível em < http://www.buala.org >. Acesso: 15 set. 2016.

KHAN, Sheila. Memória Colonial - O Tibete de África de Margarida Paredes. Jornal de Letras, Artes e Ideias, Ano XXVII / n. 959, p. 23, 2007.

MARGARIDO, Alfredo. Estudos sobre literaturas das nações africanas de língua portuguesa. Lisboa: A regra do jogo, 1980.

PAREDES, Margarida. O Tibete de África. Vila do Conde, Verso da História: 2015.

_____. Folheando com... Margarida Paredes. Portal da Literatura, 22 jun 2016. Disponível em < http://www.portaldaliteratura.com>. Acesso: 15 set. 2016.

PETERS, Laura. Orphan Texts: Victorian Orphans, Culture and Empire. Manchester: Manchester UP, 2000.

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Published

2017-12-21

Issue

Vol. 9 No. 17 (2017): O cinema e o documentário nos países africanos de língua oficial portuguesa

Section

Articles

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