Revolutionary Languages: Boyhood and Literary Filiations from Luandino to Ondjaki

What is it about?

Analysing the connections between Luandino and Ondjaki’s boyhood nar- ratives or estórias, this chapter highlights how childhood is mobilised in An- golan literature as a privileged site of agency, locating story-telling and nos- talgia at the heart of Angolan narratives of resistance and utopia from the anticolonial struggle for liberation in the 1960s to today. The chapter will first identify some of the core characteristics of children and boyhood narratives in Luandino, through an analysis of two of his short stories, ‘Estória da galinha e do ovo’ from Luuanda (1963); and ‘Memória narrativa ao sol de Kinaxixi’ (Nar- rative Memory in the Kinaxixi Sun) from his later work No antigamente, na vida (1974). Particular attention will be paid to the gendered subtext of the stories, and the ways in which it is woven into the Angolan nationalist discourse of uto- pian emancipation. We will then move on to examine two novels by Ondjaki, Bom Dia Camaradas and AvóDezanove e o segredo do Soviético, highlighting how this younger author similarly connects aesthetics and politics in highly poetic, multilingual descriptions of childhood in Luanda under the authorit- arian single-party socialist regime. By comparing canonical works by Luandino with those of his most gifted disciple, we highlight multilingualism and childhood narratives as key aspects straddling nationalist and postcolonial Angolan literature.

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Photo by D. Belt on Unsplash

Photo by D. Belt on Unsplash