Missossos and makas: the narrator’s performance in Insubmissas lágrimas de mulheres, by Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

Missosso is that kind of narrative perceived by Angolans as “totally traditional”, in the sense that it is strictly a product of the imaginary; maka is a form of narrative that tells an event represented as having been lived by the teller, by someone close to him/her, or by someone of whom they have heard about. These two forms, conjoined in the short stories of Insubmissas lágrimas de mulheres, lead to the hypothesis that the aesthetic procedures deployed by Conceição Evaristo evidence not only the concern with the “griotization” of the narrative expression, which restores to writing procedures characteristic of orality, but there is also a meta-fictional procedure, since the group of stories that compose the book debate the very act of literary creation. In turn, one may think of a fourteenth story, that which, despite being part of the collection, tells the experience of the author, who inscribes her own perspective as writer as she writes.