Memories in conflict in Essa dama bate bué!

Abstract

V.Y. Mudimbe (2013) points out that the colonial space is a place of a game: the colonial gesture necessarily implied the metamorphosis of a memory, a force of domain; on the other hand, the anti-colonial construction will experiment the same violence. If independence as a myth reorganizes the colonial narrative, once the independent nation is consolidated, the emerged discourses expose new ideological articulations that discuss aspects of the new national face. This essay intends to analyze the novel Essa dama bate bué!, by Yara Monteiro, an Afro-Portuguese writer, which describes Vitória’s journey into Angola, after years living in Lisbon with her assimilated Angolan grandfather and her Portuguese grandmother, in search of her mother, who has struggled for Angola’s independence.