Literary Voices of Luanda and Maputo: A Struggle for the City

Margarida Calafate Ribeiro

doi:10.21471/jls.v1i1.37

Margarida Calafate Ribeiro Universidade de Coimbra/University of Bologna

DOI: https://doi.org/10.21471/jls.v1i1.37

Keywords: Maputo, Luanda, Colonial and postcolonial literature, Urban studies

Abstract

In this article, I provide an overview of literary portrayals of the cities of Luanda and Maputo over the course of their histories from the colonial period to the post-independence era. In particular, I draw on the literary images and descriptions of the cities to demonstrate a design of inequality that their urbanism determines. Finally, I argue that a struggle for terrain and citizenship—in the conquest of space by colonizers and the reconquest of lost places by the colonized—draws the lines of that inequality.

Author Biography

Margarida Calafate Ribeiro, Universidade de Coimbra/University of Bologna

Margarida Calafate Ribeiro is a senior research fellow at the Centro de Estudos Sociais, Universidade de Coimbra. She holds the Cátedra Eduardo Lourenço at the University of Bologna, and a European Research Council Consolidator Grant for her project, "MEMOIRS - Filhos de Império e Pós-Memórias Europeias." Among many other works, she is author of Uma história de regressos: Império, guerra colonial e pós-colonialismo and África no feminino: As mulheres portuguesas e a guerra colonial.