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Paper short abstract:

This paper focusses specifically on how Africa and African experience and heritage are portrayed and dealt with in the works of two contemporary women writers: Paulina Chiziane (Mozambique) and Conceição Lima (São Tomé and Príncipe).

Paper long abstract:

As a part of the AfroLab research project, my work takes into account the role of Portuguese institutions on the consecration and dissemination of Portuguese-language African literatures. These can be said to occupy a place at a crossroad of multiple marginalities, insofar as they add the peripherality of their African origin with that of their language of choice, given the marginal status of Portuguese language. In this context, one interesting research point arises from the fact that, given the rules and modes of consecration and circulation of cultural goods, Portuguese-language African authors find themselves torn between two worlds – one language, two continents – since, for them, the locus of production (their African countries) is markedly different from their primary foreign locus of reception (Portuguese cultural institutions).

This paper focusses specifically on how Africa and African experience, ancestry and heritage are portrayed and dealt with in the works of two contemporary women writers: Paulina Chiziane (Mozambique) and Conceição Lima (São Tomé and Príncipe). Particularly bearing in mind that their international readership includes, even excluding translation phenomena, a pool of Portuguese readers, it is interesting to assess what kind of Africa they convey, with their writing. Given the temptation of commodifying cultural difference, this paper pays attention to the strategies these writers use to deal with the European tendency to exoticise African experience and how their work seeks to draw universal streaks out of local traits.