<i>“E tu, que achas tu de tudo isto?”</i>: Colonial Women, Memory and Post-Independence in João Paulo Borges Coelho’s <i>Rainhas da Noite</i>

Abstract

This essay analyzes João Paulo Borges Coelho’s latest novel, Rainhas da Noite (2013), from the perspective of its portrayal of colonial women. My argument begins by recalling Laura Calvacante Padilha’s inspired insights into the representation of voices from pre-colonial traditions in modern African fiction. I then develop and extend Padilha’s work by including voices from the historically more recent colonial past within the fictional repertory of recovered voices. Borges Coelho’s writings indeed allude to spaces and “voices” of African tradition, as Padilha argues. I suggest, however, that it is the memory of the past of Mozambican colonial time, as well as the relation between that past and a present defined by post-independence, that constitutes the axis of aesthetic and social meaning in Rainhas da Noite. The recent past of Portuguese colonial domination permeates Borges Coelho’s novels. 

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Original in English.