Goans, Oceans, and Intersections
Alter-Histories and Alternate Presents in Mia Couto's O outro pé da sereia
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 9251138 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Chandani Patel (corresponding author), Chandani Patel Chandani Patel |
| Year | 2017 |
| Volume | 48 |
| Issue | 2 |
| Pages | 94 |
| Publication date | 2017-01-01 |
| Open Access | No |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Research in African Literatures (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0034-5210 • E-ISSN: 1527-2044 |
| Publisher | Indiana University Press (PUBLISHER • US) |
| DOI | 10.2979/reseafrilite.48.2.08 |
| OpenAlex | W2641177259 |
| Language | EN |
| References cited | 6 |
Mia Couto's O outro pé da sereia (2006) layers multiple fictions as it narrates the story of an evangelizing mission to Mozambique in 1560 alongside stories of a Mozambican village in 2002. This essay argues that the novel's overlapping narratives allow for the emergence of multiple alter-histories centered on Goan characters, most importantly that of Dia Kumari. Tracing Dia's migration across the Indian and Atlantic Oceans, the novel enables us to read the two ocean worlds together and challenges conceptualizations of both African and Indian diasporas. But while the novel recuperates intersecting histories of the Indian and Atlantic Ocean worlds, it also posits forgetting them altogether in order for its characters to carve out an alternate present in which they can live together as a community, a present that lies outside of the idea of the nation and its attendant categories of race, ethnicity, and ancestral origins
Art · Ethnic group · Ethnology · Forgetting · Genealogy · Indian ocean · Linguistics · Literature · Narrative · Race (biology) · Sociology · Anthropology · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Gender Studies · Geology · History · Literature, Culture, and Criticism · Oceanography · Philosophy · Postcolonial and Cultural Literary Studies
| Highly cited | No |
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