Guinea-Bissau’s Narrative, Language and Identity(ies)

The aim of this book is to investigate whether and how Guinean narrative has shown, and still shows, a concern that transcends aesthetic form and turns to the problem of national and identity construction. Based on cultural and post-colonial studies, which provide a dialog between different theoretical and critical positions, as well as the unequivocal interrelationship between literature and language(s), this study intertwines fictional discourse with historical, cultural and political discourse from a transdisciplinary perspective. Its corpus is made up of works by Abdulai Sila, Odete Semedo, Filomena Embaló, Filinto de Barros, Carlos-Edmilson M. Vieira, Domingas Samy and Marinho de Pina. What emerges is that, in the fictional world of Guinean literary narrative, awareness of one’s own border position is thought through frequent dialogues with historical events and characters, the staging of orality, as well as the writers’ linguistic choices.