Yara Nakahanda Monteiro (Huambo, Angola, 45 years old) says she was born three times: the first in Angola, where she is from; the second in Portugal, where she migrated as a child with her family; and the third in Brazil, where she recognized herself “as a black woman.” This writer, who considers herself an heir to colonial history and the consequences of the slave system, published her first novel in 2018, That lady bats well (This lady hits hard). Translated into English as Loose Ties (Loose Ties) and nominated for the 2023 Dublin Literary Award, was published in Spanish with the title That cool girl and has just been presented at the Buenos Aires International Book Fair. The story ctells the story of Victoria and the search for her roots, of her mother, Rosa, a woman who fought for Angola in the civil conflict. On the first pages of the book you read the dedication to great-great-grandmother Nakahanda, great-grandmother Feliciana, grandmother Júlia and Aunt Wanda, in an affectionate journey towards her maternal lineage.
Ask. In That cool girl, Victoria, a black woman living in Europe, goes on a journey of self-discovery of female Angola, where her family is from. At times she asks herself: “Here I am light (in Angola?) and there, dark (Portugal?).” Do you identify with Victoria?
Answer. These passages refer to a politics of color. During the Portuguese colonial period, social hierarchy was mixed with skin color. The lighter I was, the more privileges I had and black people were at the bottom. Today, many light-skinned black people are also heirs to this oppressive, European and Portuguese side of colonial violence. This situation generates conflicts of belonging because I, as a Portuguese-Angolan, have white Portuguese and black Angolan heritage. Like the protagonist of my novel, Victoria, this raised many concerns for me. Belonging to “two sides” means that you belong to neither. I was going on vacation to Angola and it was “the visit” from Portugal. And sometimes I felt that a renunciation of one of my two sides was required. I am what I am because of the heritage I have. My roots are African and my wings are European. And I identify with Victoria’s character in that search for identity. I also returned to Angola because of my roots.
Q. The book tells a lot of the story of the Angolan civil war and the female characters. You were born in 1979, in the context of that conflict. Was your intention to reconstruct women’s stories during the war?
R. In my research on national history I came across a book that showed me the female historical version of the War of Independence and the Angolan Civil War. What I tried to do in my book was to rescue some of those silenced stories of women and pay tribute to those who fought twice: against the enemy, which at that time was Portugal as a symbol of colonialism, and against patriarchy. There are images that show women with weapons and a child on their backs.
Q. Are you also trying to reconstruct your family history?
R. The only similarity in this book is that my family, like Victoria’s family, also left Angola during the civil war. However, in my history there are dramatic cases caused by war, which not only kills bodies, but also deconstructs emotional ties. I grew up in Portugal where I arrived with my maternal family, my mother; my aunt and grandmother came later. We are a family refugee from a civil war. My grandfather died with a map of Angola in front of his bed. We left Angola, but we never separated emotionally.
Q. How was the novel received in Portugal?
R. The book was very well received by the Portuguese academy. It was a big surprise for me. There were people from my generation who identified with the story of returning to Angola.
The history of Portugal maintains the vision of the “good colonizer”
Q. You mentioned that Angola is like a silenced history. What is the story that is told in Portugal?
R. The history of Portugal maintains the vision of the “good colonizer.” Currently there are very good relations between Portugal and Angola. However, there is no open and sincere dialogue about the perpetuated violence. I studied in the Portuguese educational system and there is little or nothing seen about colonialism and slavery. Even today, in school textbooks, the word “slaves” is mentioned and not “enslaved people.” There is a dehumanization of black bodies. The story of the history of Portugal is about the glories, the triumphs of maritime expansion, of the arrival in Brazil, in new territories. But there is no talk of the violence of the system, of the people who died in transatlantic traffic. In any case, it cannot be generalized either. We recently had the example of the current president of the Republic [de Portugal]Marcelo Rebelo de Sousa, who has highlighted the need to recognize the responsibilities of the violence and crimes committed by colonialism.
Q. She says that she recognized herself as black when she lived in Brazil.
R. I lived two years in Rio de Janeiro. It was when I encountered the black pride movements, black literature, fiction and non-fiction about blackness. It was like an awakening for me that had not happened to me either in Portugal or Angola. Brazilian authors such as Conceição Evaristo, Ana Maria Gonçalves or Bianca Santana had a great influence on my identity rescue. When I read the writer Bianca Santana I discovered myself black. Because discovering ourselves as black is a process, it is something that is denied to us because we are taught as negative. Brazil is a country where structural racism is present in everyday life. Just look at those who are domestic workers, those who work in cafes or those who live in favelas. In Rio de Janeiro, police violence also gave me the idea of that structural racism, of how black bodies are killed indiscriminately and shot at.
Black women’s feminist movements feel that their demands are not integrated into white women’s movements in Europe
Q. What are the points of connection and differences between feminist and artistic movements of black women in African countries, in Brazil and Europe?
R. They are different communities and realities. Fortunately, Brazil has a great influence from the American black movements and that is why it is better structured, much more advanced than the black feminist movements in Portugal. The struggle of black women in Africa, for example, is completely different: they demand basic needs such as access to health or drinking water. In Europe, the fight is constant for the right to equality, to participation, to anti-racism. Many times, these black women’s movements, and I see this recurrently, feel that their demands are not integrated into the white women’s movements in Europe, which for me is a problem. I sometimes feel that European feminisms are elitist, that they only fight for some women, for white women.
Q. What are the biggest challenges to adopting anti-racist and historical reparation public policies in Portugal?
R. The lack of recognition of violence, of inherited disparities and the denial of the consequences of colonialism and slavery. When a recognition of those disparities happens and we have demonstrations like in France and Germany, we will move on to reparations. The issue of reparations is not only humanitarian. It is, above all, a moral commitment to restitution of justice, a commitment to the rehabilitation of descendants. However, there has been some progress. In Portugal, a national plan to combat racism was created. Another initiative has been the ethnic-racial survey, carried out by the National Institute of Statistics to analyze the racial-ethnic origin of residents in Portugal and the discrimination factors that exist. There is still resistance from society. The future involves the construction of a memory reconciled with its past, with pain and with inheritance.
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