From redeeming silenced voices to decolonial cosmopolitanism

Abstract

the emergence of Afro-Portuguese literature during the second decade of the 21st century constitutes a landmark in Portuguese postcolonial literature and its reception indicates that it has been gaining more and more public recognition. More recent is the visibility of Brazilian indigenous diaspora writers in Portugal. This paper explores Yara Nakahanda Monteiro’s Memórias aparições arritmias (2021), and Ellen Lima’s Ixé Ygara voltando pra’Y’Kûá (2021) to argue that (1) they both convey a sense of displacement and (un)belonging; and (2) their writing is part of a decolonial praxis to deconstruct the Portuguese colonial and imperial imaginary. Immigrant Brazilian writers convey time density to the wider project of colonial modernity in Portuguese language. This global perspective expands the discussion on the postcolonial experience that has essentially been centered on the experience of African descent and raises the possibility of imagining a decolonial cosmopolitanism that enables pluriversal ways of feeling the world in Portuguese language. This writing contributes to thinking reparations to present-day persisting colonial imaginary.