Do império à república: a busca das histórias não únicas em Gungunhana: Ualalapi e as mulheres do imperador (2018), de Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa

Abstract

Portuguese-language African literature shows us that these literary productions are not just an unreasonable (re)creation of reality, especially those produced in the post-independence period. As well as becoming documents of a people's cultural memory, they open new possibilities for reading and understanding African worldviews. This paper aims to analyze the narratives of Ualalapi and the Emperor's Wives (2018), by Ungulani Ba Ka Khosa, with an emphasis on the relationship between history and literature. The author stands out as one of the Mozambican writers who sets out to (re)tell the story of his own country through literature, paying attention to the danger of single stories and how they are full of with historical erasure and silencing. The use of textual analysis as a methodology and a qualitative approach allowed us to conclude that the author meets post-colonial theoretical postulates, through a deep relationship in the forces of power that involve the creation, circulation and control of narratives. The clues left by the writer himself in the texts about his distrust of historical truths were followed during the research, so that we could reach a better understanding of his writing and his proposal for self-inscription, as proposed by Achille Mbembe (2001). The author's commitment to not only allude to the facts, but also to reassemble them using local, circular and within sources was noted. The contributions of Mbembe (2001; 2018), Adichie (2009), Mata (2003), Benjamin (1987) and Vilhena (1999) will serve as the critical-theoretical framework for the research.