Ana Mafalda Leite

O Oriente é um bordado oculto na história de Moçambique: Entrevista com Ana Mafalda Leite

In this interview, Ana Mafalda Leite discusses the Indian Ocean and the East, as well as their meanings for Mozambican literature and for her poetic and academic trajectory.

Violência e Morte na poesia de José Craveirinha

Resumo:

In this second article of the journal “Do Colonialismo ao Patriarcado: Representações da Violência nas Literaturas Africanas”, Violência e Morte na poesia de José Craveirinha, Ana Mafalda Leite (CEsA/CSG/ISEG/ULisboa) studies the representation of elements related to violence and death in José Craveirinha’s poetry. The last books by José Craveirinha, published during his life, Babalaze das Hienas (1992) and Maria (1998) deal with the theme of death, apparently from different points of view. In fact, the publication of unpublished books in the last phase of his life included, besides these two books, a first edition of Maria (1988). The previous books, Xigubo, Karingana ua Karingana and Cela 1, which have also been re-edited, are part of the poetic production made during the colonial period. Craveirinha, always writing, but shy of publication, bequeathed us Babalaze and Maria as the result of his writing in post-colonial times, although we know, however, that other material exists, still unpublished. The books in question have in common a similar formal trait, short poems, almost epigrammatic inscriptions, as a result of a daily proximity to the experience of death, on the one hand of the beloved woman, in the case of Maria, and on the other hand of death resulting from the civil war, in the case of Babalaze das Hienas.

Citação:

Leite, Ana Mafalda. “Violência e Morte na poesia de José Craveirinha”. In Do Colonialismo ao Patriarcado: Representações da Violência nas Literaturas Africanas, 33-42. 2020.

Resenha De Janela Para O Índico. Poesia Incompleta (1984-2019), De Ana Mafalda Leite

Abstract:

Resenha de Janela para o Índico. Poesia Incompleta (1984-2019) focuses on the most recent poetic anthology by Ana Mafalda Leite, published in Portugal by the Cape Verdean/Portuguese publishing house Rosa de Porcelana. We cannot fail to point out that the book appeared on the publishing scene in 2020, that is, in the year dramatically marked by the global pandemic of the new coronavirus, so the window mentioned in the title acquired an even more suggestive sense of freedom and openness. The anthology is organised into nine sections, which correspond to the books previously published by the author, from which a wide and careful selection was made, and a section with two unpublished texts. Thus, this Window witnesses a path of thirty-five years of poetic writing. A journey that is parallel to an equally long and consolidated career as a teacher and scholar of literature and cinema from the five Portuguese-speaking African countries. It is worth mentioning that Ana Mafalda Leite’s poetic writing has been the object of growing appreciation and recognition by the critics and the public. Her poetic texts have been included in various academic publications – in addition to anthologies and literary magazines – such as Itinerâncias and Vozes femininas de África, among others. In 2015 she was awarded the Femina1 prize for her poetic production, and in 2011 her poems were translated into English and published in the volume Stained Glass. Poetry from the Land of Mozambique, organized by Luís Rafael Mitras. It should also be noted that a selection of poems, from Janela para o Índico, will soon be published in Italian translation, on the initiative of Roberto Francavilla.

Quotation:

Falconi, J. (2021). Resenha De Janela Para O Índico. Poesia Incompleta (1984-2019), De Ana Mafalda Leite, Caderno Seminal 38.1, p. 418-443

Literatures and Cultures of the Indian Ocean

Abstract:

Portuguese Studies is a biannual multi-disciplinary journal dedicated to research on the cultures, literatures, history, and societies of the Lusophone world. Ana Mafalda Leite, Elena Brugioni, and Jessica Falconi were the organizers of this issue of the journal, Literatures and Cultures of the Indian Ocean. The president of the Editorial Board for 2021 is Catarina Fouto, and the Journals editor is Emanuelle Rodrigues Dos Santos. The journal is published by the Modern Humanities Research Association (MHRA), an international organization with members in all parts of the world. The aim of the Association is to encourage and promote advanced study and research in the field of modern humanities. It is concerned to break down barriers between scholars working in different disciplines and to maintain the unity of humanistic scholarship in the face of increasing specialization. The present volume results frorn the scholarly work conducted by members of the research project NILUS — Narratives Ofthe Indian Ocean in the Lusophone Space. The main purpose of the project consisted in establishing a theoretical and disciplinary connection between Lusophone Literary, Visual and Cultural Studies and the transdisciplinary field Of Indian Ocean Studies. The project on the written and visual narratives hailing from, or related to, the territories formerly colonized by Portugal along the Indian Ocean, specifically Mozambique, Goa, and East Timor. This volume, therefore, constitutes an attempt to bridge a significant critical and disciplinary gap, motivated by an almost total lack of dialogue among the above-mentioned fields of study. This lack of dialogue becomes ever more apparent if we bear in mind the increasingly central role played by historical, anthropological, literary, and cultural studies of the Atlantic Ocean in addressing colonial and postcolonial cultural and identity-related outputs and relations from the territories that Out Of Portuguese colonial rule. Consider, for instance, the influence of the notion of Brown Atlantic (Atlântico Pardo), de,’eloped by the anthropologist Miguel Vale de Almeida as a counterpoint to Paul Gilroy’s Black Atlantic, or the use of the Portugal -Brazil-Angola triangulation in comparative and transnational- oriented literary and cultural studies.4

Quotation:

Leite, A.M.; Brugioni, E. & Falconi, J. (2021) (eds). “Literatures and Cultures of the Indian Ocean”, Portuguese Studies 37.2.

Voices, Languages, Discourses: Interpreting the present and the memory of Nation in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe

Abstract:

Voices, Languages, Discourses: Interpreting the Present and the Memory of Nation in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe brings together a selection of interviews with writers and filmmakers from Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe in order to examine representations and images of national identity in these countries’ postcolonial narratives. It continues and completes the exploration of the postcolonial imaginary and identity of Portuguese-speaking Africa presented in the previous interview volume Speaking the Postcolonial Nation: Interviews with Writers from Angola and Mozambique (2014). Memory, history, migration and diaspora are central notions in the recreation and reconceptualisation of the nation and its identities in Cape Verdean, Guinean and São Tomense literary and film culture. By bringing together different generations of writers and filmmakers, with a wide variety of perspectives on the historical, social and cultural changes that occurred in their countries, this book makes a valuable contribution to current debates on post-colonialism, nation and identity in these former Portuguese colonies.

Quotation:

Leite, A., M., Falconi, J., Krakowska, K., Kahn, S., Secco, C. (2020). Voices, Languages, Discourses: Interpreting the Present and the Memory of Nation in Cape Verde, Guinea-Bissau and São Tomé and Príncipe. Oxford, United Kingdom: Peter Lang Verlag. Retrieved Oct 6, 2022, from https://www.peterlang.com/document/1055586