No Country for Nonconforming Women: Feminine Conceptions of Lusophone Africa

This study puts forward a comparative analysis of the literary production of three female authors who write from the particular contexts of their countries of origin in the postcolonial era: the Cape Verdean Dina Salústio, the Mozambican Paulina Chiziane and the Angolan Rosária da Silva. Emerging from three young and very different nation-states, the three female authors are themselves very distinct, not only with regard to their generation, but also in biographical and bibliographical terms. They have, however, one very specific aspect in common, which is the fact that all of them were the first female novel writer to publish in the context of their independent countries, thus constituting a major breakthrough in the male-dominated literary canons of their cultural nations. Their works demonstrate the importance of examining nationalism and national identity through gender. At the same time, they highlight the potential of situated gender analyses in the understanding and contestation of the power networks which consolidate the supremacy of hegemonic national narratives, both colonial and postcolonial. As such, this study aims to observe the authors’ cultural construction of their complex postcolonial nations from a female-focalised point of view, as well as their representation of the women of these nations and their interaction with the transcultural contexts of each analysed country. The main argument that this study develops in three distinct chapters (each one devoted to the literary production of each author) is that the building of the post-independence nations under analysis is structured by gender differentiation.