The River and the Word, Memory in Crossing:

writing as Resistance in A cegueira do rio (2024), by Mia Couto

Abstract

Published in 2024, Mia Couto’s novel A cegueira do rio proposes a narrative that intertwines memory, forgetting, and symbolic resistance. The story reveals hidden voices, especially those of women and traditional communities, that emerge to question the hegemonic accounts of colonial history. The river, a central symbol, not only delimits but also connects spaces and identities traversed by ancestral experiences. The work reconstructs meanings from vestiges and orality, redefining the past through a language that combines myth, poetry, and history. Memory is treated not as a static repository, but as a dynamic field of disputes and reinventions. The narrator, by investigating the past of the region and its inhabitants, reconstructs identities and challenges linear chronology, evoking the power of fiction as a means of repairing silences. Thus, Mia Couto transforms writing into an instrument of cultural and affective resistance against the wounds opened by colonization and historical erasure.