Literary journeys: new excursions to the city of Luanda resignified

Abstract

During the period of the struggles for Angolan independence, the city of Luanda has become one of the privileged symbolic spaces of literary texts, being a reference for the construction of national identity process. After the independence, Angolan authors start to write about the disillusionment and disappointment and the new challenges for the country. In this process, Luanda also underwent reinterpretation and became the beginning to new and necessary journeys. The objective of this study is to discuss these changes concerning this symbolic space, from a brief review of José Luan­dino Vieira’s texts produced during the colonial period and two Angolan novels of the post-independence: A casa velha das margens (1999), written by Arnaldo Santos, and Mãe, materno mar (2001), written by Boaventura Cardoso. In these novels, Luanda is no longer the privileged stage of events. The focus, now, is the displacement of the characters that are the guides of both texts and the findings of themselves and of the country provided by their travels.

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DOI: http://dx.doi.org/10.21881/abriluff.2016n16a326