USA
Canada
M. Francisca Alvarenga
M. Francisca B. B. de Alvarenga is currently working on her PhD in Comparative Studies at the School of Arts and Humanities of the University of Lisbon (FLUL). She is a Member in Training at the Centre for Comparative Studies at FLUL. She completed her Master’s Degree in Intercultural Studies at Aarhus University, Denmark, and was awarded her BA in Arts and Humanities, with a Major in English Studies, at FLUL. She is a member of the Editorial Board at estrema. Her research areas cover Queer Studies, Gender Studies, Literature, Cinema and Television, Media, Necropolitics, and (Neo)-Victorianism. For more see: www.cienciavitae.pt/en/E114-A139-B40D.
mfalvarenga@campus.ul.pt
Ilan Kelman
ilan_kelman@hotmail.com
Institute for Risk & Disaster Reduction and Institute for Global Health, University College London, UK and University of Agder, Norway
Ilan Kelman http://www.ilankelman.org and Twitter/Instagram @ILANKELMAN is Professor of Disasters and Health at University College London, England and a Professor II at the University of Agder, Kristiansand, Norway. His overall research interest is linking disasters and health, including the integration of climate change into disaster research and health research. That covers three main areas: (i) disaster diplomacy and health diplomacy http://www.disasterdiplomacy.org ; (ii) island sustainability involving safe and healthy communities in isolated locations http://www.islandvulnerability.org ; and (iii) risk education for health and disasters http://www.riskred.org
Jonathan Pugh
Jonathan Pugh is Reader in Island Studies, Newcastle University, UK. He has over 70 publications and is noted for his work on the ‘relational’ and ‘archipelagic’ turns in island studies, disrupting the figure of the insular island. Jonathan has held fellowships, given many international keynotes and invited lectures, including at Princeton, Harvard, Virginia Tech, London, Cornell, Vienna, Zurich, Trinity College Dublin, Rutgers, California, University of West Indies and National Taiwan Normal University. Jonathan’s recent work – Anthropocene Islands: Entangled Worlds (Pugh and Chandler, 2021) – examines how islands play an increasingly prominent role in Anthropocene critical thinking, knowledge and policy practices. Jonathan.Pugh@ncl.ac.uk.
The Island in Northern-American and English 20th and 21st – centuries Paranormal Horror Films and TV-Shows
[In Cinema, Horror]: Although prolific in representations in horror cinema and television shows, the island as an object of horror has yet to be further studied. In the 20th and 21st centuries, the island has been the stage for numerous horror films and television shows. Notably, the island is generally represented as the stage for horror, very rarely being the source of horror itself. However, there are some notable examples where the island itself represents the horror whether because of its inhabitants, for example in Doomwatch (Sasdy 1972) or The Wicker Man (Hardy 1973), or due to its fauna and flora, like Jaws (Spielberg 1975), and The Bay (Levinson 2012). The characteristics that the island evokes can be read in a binary. Instead of representing a private paradise, these islands usually represent individual (or group) seclusion that brings about the need for survival. The island often functions as the representation of exclusion from ‘normal’ society and the characters’ inability to reach it safely, often connecting it to the idea of the supernatural, such as in Blood Beach (Bloom 1981), The Woman in Black (Watkins 2012), an adaptation of Susan Hill’s homonymous work (1983), and Sweetheart (Dillard 2019), or of madness, for example in Shutter Island (Scorsese 2010) or The Lighthouse (Eggers 2019). It also evokes the feelings of imprisonment, limited resources, strange or foreign life forms, and a place where privacy can mean the concealment of horror to outsiders, such as Midnight Mass (Flanagan 2021), which evokes religious horror that is kept at bay from the rest of the world and contained because it is set on an island, or Fantasy Island (Wadlow 2020), where the notion of paradisiac and idyllic islands is subverted into its dystopic opposite. The island in horror films has been studied from a postcolonial perspective (Williams 1983; Martens 2021), particularly concerning films of Northern-American or British production that set the horror on foreign islands, namely those which are not European and white-centred, focusing, for instance, on the representation of African-Caribbean religions and practices and the zombie figure. It has also been studied through the lens of diabolical isolation and as the site for scientific experiment, like The Island of Lost Souls (Kenton 1934), the adaptation of H. G. Wells’ The Island of Dr. Mureau (1896), creation and/or concealment, as in Sedgwick’s study about ‘Nazi Islands’ (2018). However, it is from Australia that the study of the island as a horror site seems to be more fertile, specifically studies of ‘Ozploitation’, that is, films that explore the Australian island landscape as a product of colonisation and of disconnection from the (main)land (Simpson 2010; Culley 2020; Ryan and Ellison 2020).
Bibliography:
CULLEY, NINA. “The Isolation at the Heart of Australian Horror.” Kill Your Darlings, Jul-Dec 2020, 2020, pp. 263-265. Informit, search.informit.org/doi/10.3316/informit.630726095716522.
MARTENS, EMIEL. “The 1930s Horror Adventure Film on Location in Jamaica: ‘Jungle Gods’, ‘Voodoo Drums’ and ‘Mumbo Jumbo’ in the ‘Secret Places of Paradise Island’. Humanities, vol. 10, no. 2, 2021, doi: 10.3390/h10020062.
RYAN, MARK DAVID, AND ELISABETH WILSON. “Beaches in Australian Horror Films: Sites of Fear and Retreat.” Writing the Australian Beach. Local Site, Global Idea, edited by Elisabeth Ellison and Donna Lee Brien. 2020. Cham: Palgrave Macmillan.
SEDGWICK, LAURA. “Islands Of Horror: Nazi Mad Science and The Occult in Shock Waves (1977), Hellboy (2004), And The Devil’s Rock (2011).” Post Script, special issue on Islands and Film, vol. 37, no. 2/3, 2018, pp. 27-39. Proquest, www.proquest.com/openview/00ccdba578653d3fe1a5b2e7b5bfb0b5/1?pq-origsite=gscholar&cbl=44598. Accessed January 27, 2022.
SIMPSON, CATHERINE. “Australian eco-horror and Gaia’s revenge: animals, eco-nationalism and the ‘new nature’.” Studies in Australasian Cinema, vol. 4, no. 1, 2010, pp. 43-54, doi: 10.1386/sac.4.1.43_1.
WILLIAMS, TONY. “White Zombie. Haitian Horror.” Jump Cut: A Review of Contemporary Media, vol. 28, 1983, pp. 18-20. Jump Cut, www.ejumpcut.org/archive/onlinessays/JC28folder/WhiteZombie.html. Accessed January 27, 2022.
Filmography:
Blood Beach. Directed by Jeffrey Bloom, The Jerry Gross Organization, 1981.
Doomwatch. Directed by Peter Sasdy, BBC, 1972.
Fantasy Island. Directed by Jeff Wadlow, Columbia Pictures, 2020.
Jaws. Directed by Steven Spielberg, Universal Studies, 1975.
Midnight Mass. Directed by Mike Flanagan, Netflix, 2021.
Shutter Island. Directed by Martin Scorsese, Paramount Pictures, 2010.
Sweetheart. Directed by Justin Dillard, Blumhouse Productions, 2019.
The Bay. Directed by Barry Levinson, Baltimore Pictures, 2012.
The Island of Lost Souls. Directed by Erle C. Kenton, Paramount Pictures, 1932.
The Lighthouse. Directed by Max Eggers, A24, 2019.
The Woman in Black. Directed by James Watkins, Hammer Film Productions, 2012.
Wicker Man. Directed by Robin Hardy, British Lion Films, 1973.
Further Reading
CHIBNALL, STEVE, AND JULIAN PETLEY (eds.). British Horror Cinema. British Popular Cinema. 2002. London and New York: Routledge.
HUTCHINGS, PETER. Hammer and Beyond: The British Horror Film. 1993. Manchester and New York: Manchester University Press.
—. Historical Dictionary of Horror Cinema, 2nd edition. 2018. London: Rowman & Littlefield.
—. The A to Z of Horror Cinema. 2009. Lanham, Toronto, Plymouth: The Scarecrow Press.
LEEDER, MURRAY. Horror Film. A Critical Introduction. 2018. New York, London, Oxford, New Delhi, Sydney: Bloomsbury.
SMITH, GARY A. Uneasy Dreams: The Golden Age of British Horror Films, 1956-1976. 2000. Jefferson, North Carolina, and London: McFarland & Company.
WALLER, GREGORY A. (ed.). American Horrors. Essays on the Modern American Horror Film. 1987. Urbana and Chicago: University of Illinois Press.
Paulo César Vieira Figueira
Paulo Figueira has a PhD in Atlantic Islands – specialization in Cultural Heritage (Ilhas Atlânticas: História, Património Cultural e Quadro Jurídico-Institucional – especialidade em Património Cultural). He is an integrated member of CEComp and a collaborating member of CLEPUL. Since graduation, he has shown interest in the insular character of Madeiran identity, through literature (poetry and historical novel) and with relevance to the works of José Agostinho Baptista and João dos Reis Gomes, on which he has presented several communications and articles. In the same way, he has sought to study Cape Verdean and Azorean writers. paulocv@sapo.pt.
Viagens, de João dos Reis Gomes
Viagens appears in the travel literature of Madeiran authors as the posthumous compilation of three works by João dos Reis Gomes, Através da França, Suíça e Itália, Três Capitais de Espanha and Através da Alemanha. The particularity of this work is that could be understood as an exemplar of travel literature by a Madeiran author about trips made outside the insular space or the portuguese space.
We believe that this type of travel literature produced by authors from Madeira who travel to continental spaces allows, in the case of João dos Reis Gomes, the opening of another research suggestion that is the vision of the European continental space by an islander from a territory of the current European outermost region. The texts by João dos Reis Gomes also suggest the interpretation of the tourist phenomenon at the beginning of the 20th century, linked to religious, leisure or medicinal and therapeutic reasons, something also experienced in the insular space.
In this context, the testimony of an islander’s journey in a continental space reveals a measure of description characteristic of someone that lives on an island and could measure the world through it, which allows us to envision insularity as an opening to the world.
In Viagens, João dos Reis Gomes, motivated by the knowledge of the other, offers the reader the perspective of the traveling writer and not a simple tourist commentary: “apodera-se do ritmo e da técnica do episódio e do relato histórico, assegurando a cor local, através de um olhar testemunha, subjetivo. Surge, então, a categoria do escritor viajante, com uma dupla função: ser um olhar que escreve e, ao mesmo tempo, um escritor” (Mello, 2010: 145). Regarding the three books that make up the volume Viagens, we talk about an experience resulting from the second Madeiran pilgrimage to European Marian shrines, a leisure trip to Spain and a trip for health and leisure reasons to Germany.
Através da França, Suíça e Itália was published as a book in 1929, based on the chronicles of João dos Reis Gomes first published in the Diário da Madeira, in 1926, the year of the second Madeiran pilgrimage. We think that the second Madeiran pilgrimage is part of the context of the great transnational pilgrimages that take place all over Europe, influenced by the climate of the apparitions of Fátima, of the canonization of Margaret Mary Alacoque, on May 13, 1920, by Pope Benedict XV, and by the large number of pilgrims to the Lourdes cave, a phenomenon of faith, facilitated by Catholic groups.
However, we are talking about a story that is a non religious testimony, because João dos Reis Gomes confesses that he does not feel able to address religious matters and writes because his friends asked him to do so: “Tinham-me alguns amigos pedido, com penhorante insistência, que lhes desse umas breves impressões desta peregrinação” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 23). We believe that one of the main points of interest of this travel testimony is the demonstration of the author’s conservative thinking and the reflections on politics, society and culture, taking into account that João dos Reis Gomes is a military man and an islander who is faced with different ways of being. We can also add a certain admiration for the Italian political order, especially if we are confronted with the events in Portugal and the precarious situation of the First Republic: “O viajante sente a perfeita comunhão do povo com o salvador da Itália [Mussolini]” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 157).
As an island traveler, nostalgia takes hold during some episodes of the author and his entourage, as is the case of the comparison with the Côte d’Azur and the mountains of Switzerland: “O espetáculo [the swiss landscape] é, na verdade, grandioso e comovedoramente evocativo. Ninguém deixou de pensar, mais vivamente, na sua casinha da alterosa ilha” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 195).
Três Capitais de Espanha is the report of a private trip, dedicated to the son of João dos Reis Gomes, Álvaro Reis Gomes, “companheiro nestas digressões” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 227). The journey of the traveling writer is intertwined with Spanish history, from the North, Burgos, through Toledo, conquered by Alfonso VI, to the imperial city of Seville. The traveling writer’s testimony is based on art and culture and the subjectivity of admiration: “Mas, porque escrevo, então?! Primeiro, por uma imposição de espírito ou, melhor, de sensibilidade, que me não deixa conter as emoções colhidas – […]; segundo, porque, dado o direito de admirar, na apreciação de qualquer facto, país ou obra de arte, há sempre um certo fator subjetivo” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 229).
Através da Alemanha is a book of 1949, based on the chronicles first published in Diário da Madeira, in 1931. The purpose of the book edition is to witness to the reader the German civilization before the Second World War: “apenas elementos para um confronto entre o passado [1931] e o presente [1949]; confronto que, por tão desolador como expressivo, oxalá pudesse contribuir – ingénua utopia! – para adoçar a alma e prevenir a consciência” (Reis Gomes, 2020: 283).
In addition to approaching a country far from the European periphery, João dos Reis Gomes’ interests lie in Neubabelsberg, the visit to the UFA studio (Universum-Film Aktiengesellschaft) and the contemplation of cinematographic art, the ascent of the Rhine (where he found inspiration to his book A Lenda de Loreley, contada por um latino) and the emotion, as journalist and writer, in the visit of Gutenberg’s museum, in Mainz.
For all these reasons, we believe that Viagens is an example of the island traveler writer and the outside perspective he adds to the island world, due to the awareness that these are different worlds. The themes discussed reflect that insularity is part of a global world, in which events that occur in a given space and time are interconnected and act on several other geographic points, whether of a political, cultural, philosophical or scientific nature.
References
Collot, Michel (2014). Pour une Géographie Littéraire. Paris: Éditions Corti.
Cristóvão, Fernando (2002). Condicionantes Culturais da Literatura de Viagens. Coimbra: Almedina.
Mello, Maria Elizabeth Chaves de (2010). O relato de viagem – narradores, entre a memória, o fictício e o imaginário. In Dalva Calvão e Norimar Júdice (Org.). Gragoatá, 28. Niterói: Universidade Federal Fluminense. 141-152.
Nucera, Domenico (2002). Los viajes y la literatura. In Armando Gnisci (Org.). Introducción a la Literatura Comparada. Barcelona: Editorial Crítica. 241-290.
Pita, Gabriel de Jesus (1985). Decadência e queda da Primeira República analisada na Imprensa Madeirense da época. In António Loja (Dir.). Atlântico, 3. Funchal: Eurolitho. 194-209.
Reis Gomes, João dos (1949). Através da Alemanha. Lisboa: Livraria Clássica.
Reis Gomes, João dos (1929). Através da França, Suíça e Itália. Lisboa: Livraria Clássica.
Reis Gomes, João dos (1931). Três Capitais de Espanha: Burgos-Toledo-Sevilha. Funchal: Diário da Madeira.
Reis Gomes, João dos (2020). Viagens. Funchal: Imprensa Académica.
Historical Novels – João dos Reis Gomes
The historical novels of João dos Reis Gomes correspond to three titles, A filha de Tristão das Damas (1909 and 1946), O anel do Imperador (1934) and O cavaleiro de Santa Catarina (1942), which focus on political, historical and cultural issues and local traditions. From the point of view of literary technique, these are not innovative novels, clearly influenced by the structure of the romantic historical novel model.
The relationship of these works by João dos Reis Gomes with insularity, specifically with the construction of Madeiran identity, takes place in a perspective in which regionalism and the affirmation of regions begins to be a reality in Europe.
Born in France, in the mid-19th century, regionalism influenced the struggle for emancipation in many regions, including Madeira (Vieira, 2001: 144). The Madeiran intellectual elite sought to legitimize the struggle for greater visibility of the archipelago, through the recovery of historical references, traditions and folkloric traits that supported this insular identity: “Tão pouco uma classe política, alheada ou desconhecedora do passado histórico terá possibilidades de fazer passar e vingar o seu discurso político” (Vieira, 2001: 143).
The insular identity difference starts to be built by the generations of the beginning of the 20th century, emphasizing History, other sciences and Literature: “estas gerações, com evidentes influências regionalistas, procuraram, através da história, da literatura, da ciência, a construção e validação de um panteão regional sobre o qual assentasse uma marca de diferença” (Figueira, 2021: 130)[1].
It is in this context that A filha de Tristão das Damas is published, in 1909. The first self-styled Madeiran historical novel has as its central point the help of the third donee of Funchal, Simão Gonçalves da Câmara, in the conquest of Safim, by Portugal. This motive serves to celebrate the 400th anniversary of Madeira’s intervention, as one of the archipelago’s historical episodes, as well as to present a subtle critique of the administrative autonomy of 1901. The publicity of Portuguese foreign policy’s commitment to the maintenance of the African Empire is also relevant. In fact, in 1946, the date of the second edition of the work, in addition to the regionalist aspect, it is again the assumption of Portugal as a colonial power, outside the sphere of emerging powers (USA and USSR), that guides the publication of this historical novel. In 1962, the novel is published again, but in fascicles by the Diário de Notícias do Funchal, with the aim of defending the Guerra do Ultramar (Overseas War) and the legitimation of the Portuguese Empire.
O anel do Imperador tells the story of Napoleon’s passage through Funchal, during his second exile, this time to the island of Saint Helena. The question of this historical episode allied to the fictional visit of Miss Isabel de S. to the French Emperor created a popular tradition fixed in the novel by João dos Reis Gomes. Behind the fiction there is, however, the propaganda of the figure of Salazar, similar to the episode of Napoleon in Madeira, seeking to present the figure of a sensitive political leader who deserves the acceptance of his Madeiran peers. It should be remembered that, in the 1930s, between the government of the military and the definitive rise of the Estado Novo, the episode of Revolta da Madeira, a political-military insurrection against the government of the military dictatorship, deepened the atmosphere between Madeira and the capital, in addition to the monopoly laws in relation to flour and milk, at the time, important industries in the archipelago.
Salazarism, in its propaganda action, sought to welcome the Madeiran elites into its midst, in a climate of harmony between the archipelago and the Government, in which the regionalist slope was exponentiated according to the homeland.
O cavaleiro de Santa Catarina offers the reader an account of the life and legend of Henrique Alemão, “sesmeiro da Madalena do Mar”, whose identity is believed to be that of Ladislaus III, the Polish king who disappeared in the Battle of Varna (1444).
The author, with this book, in addition to the attempt to preserve a heritage buffeted by the 1939 alluvium in Madalena do Mar, seeks to explore the myth of sebastianism, as there is a clear identification between the life of the Polish king and that of D. Sebastião, because both try to fight the Mohammedans, but end up missing in the decisive battle, the Polish king in Varna and the Portuguese king in Alcácer Quibir.
The circumstances of this historical novel, the 1939 alluvium and the myth of D. Sebastião, are also related to the exhibition of the Portuguese World in 1940 and the celebration of Portuguese double independence (1140 and 1640). Once again, João dos Reis Gomes appropriates a pantheistic figure from Madeira’s history and tradition to serve regionalist intentions and, at the same time, the homeland, which, in a difficult political period, in the middle of the Second World War, seeks to maintain the shaky neutrality in relation to the blocs of the belligerent powers. The sebastic figure of Henrique Alemão, in this context, invokes, in our view, the soul of national resistance and Portuguese courage in a difficult juncture.
References
Figueira, Paulo (2021). João dos Reis Gomes: contributo literário para a divulgação da História da Madeira [Phd thesis]. Funchal: Universidade da Madeira.
Figueira, Paulo (2019). O romance histórico na Madeira: o caso de A filha de Tristão das Damas, de João dos Reis Gomes. In Sérgio Guimarães de Sousa e Ana Ribeiro (orgs.). Romance histórico: cânone e periferias. Vila Nova de Famalicão: Húmus/Centro de Estudos Humanísticos da Universidade do Minho.
Marinho, Maria de Fátima (1999). O romance histórico em Portugal. Porto: Campo de Letras.
Rodrigues, Paulo (2012). O Anel do Imperador (1934), de João dos Reis Gomes, entre a História e a Ficção: Napoleão e a Madeira. In Maria Hermínia Amado Laurel (dir.). Carnets, Invasions & Évasions. La France et nous, nous et la France. Lisboa: APEF/FCT, 81-97.
Vieira, Alberto (2001). A Autonomia na História da Madeira – Questões e Equívocos. In Autonomia e História das Ilhas – Seminário Internacional. Funchal: CEHA/SRTC, 143-175.
Vieira, Alberto (2018). Arquipélagos e ilhas entre memória, desmemória e identidade. Funchal: Cadernos de Divulgação do CEHA.
[1] Alberto Vieira conceived the idea of building a pantheon of regional heroes in the sense of differentiating between regional and national history: “desenvolvem-se os estudos locais e regionais. A História local e regional ganha evidência e diferencia-se da nacional. Constrói-se o panteão de heróis regionais” (Vieira, 2018: 20).
Orlanda Amarílis
Orlanda Amarílis Lopes Rodrigues Fernandes Ferreira was a Cape Verdean writer, born on the island of Santiago, on October 8, 1924. In Mindelo (island of São Vicente), she completed primary and secondary school, before moving to the Portuguese State of Goa, where he finished his studies for the Primary Teaching. In Lisbon, he graduated in Pedagogical Sciences at the Universidade de Lisboa. He died in the portuguese capital on February 1, 2014.
Literature and Linguistics were always a presence in her life, through her husband, the writer Manuel Ferreira (Leiria, 7-18-1917/Linda-a-Velha, 3-17-1992), a scholar of Lusophone African literature and cultures, author of No Reino de Caliban and A Aventura Crioula, through her father, Armando Napoleão Rodrigues Fernandes (Brava, 7-1-1889/Praia, 6-19-1969), who published the first Creole-Portuguese dictionary, O Dialecto Crioulo: Léxico do Dialecto Crioulo do Arquipélago de Cabo Verde, and through Baltazar Lopes da Silva (São Nicolau, 4-23-1907/Lisbon, 5-28-1989), author of Chiquinho and founder of the magazine Claridade.
Orlanda Amarílis, as a member of the Academia Cultivar, founded by students from the Liceu Gil Eanes, and a contributor to the magazine Certeza (1944), belonged to the Geração de Certeza, whose main aim is to discuss the isolation of the Cape Verde archipelago and the islands from each other, with the purpose of edifying Cape Verdean culture and identity: “os escritores da Geração de Certeza propõem fincar os pés na terra e assumem um compromisso com a ação e a mudança, a partir, sobretudo, de textos literários que privilegiem a reconstrução da identidade cabo-verdiana e o combate à opressão” (Deus, 2020: 75-76).
In relation to the Geração de Certeza and supposed problem with the claridosos, Orlanda Amarílis speaks of a work of continuity:
quando apareceu a Certeza, não foi para combater a Claridade como ouvi algures. Até já ouvi que Certeza não foi marco nenhum. No entanto, para nós [os membros da Academia Cultivar], Certeza viria trazer algo de novo. Havia um pulsar diferente dentro de nós, de uma geração posterior, portanto mais recente que os fundadores da Claridade. Fundar Certeza foi dar continuidade ao que a Claridade tinha iniciado. (Laban, 1992: 271-272)
Over time, Amarílis became one of the most important female faces in Cape Verdean literature, expressing, in her work, Cape Verdean women and the diaspora. Their stories reveal an important contribution to the registration and dissemination of Cape Verde’s intangible heritage.
Upon her return, after a long exile, she recalls her lost insularity, looking in that time of physical distance for the strength that made her write and publicize the life of the islands, even in the “tontice ingénua” (naive foolishness) of being able to relive that time:
eu fui colocada na posição de procura de um universo perdido e, se essa rotura existiu virtualmente, foi bom, porque me obrigou a escrever. No entanto, o meu clima emocional de então não tem razão de ser neste momento. É uma tontice ingénua pensarmos ser possível, ao fim de tantos anos de ausência, reviver as emoções de então. […]. Quando há alguns anos voltei a Cabo Verde, perante mim espalharam-se as cinzas do vulcão que foi a minha vida até aos dezasseis anos. (Laban, 1992: 263)
As the most outstanding work we consider Cais do Sodré té Salamansa (1974; 1991), whose title is a reference to Lisbon and the island of São Vicente, more precisely to the village located northeast of Mindelo. The set of seven short stories makes known the marks that we point out in Orlanda Amarílis’s stories, with relevance to the diaspora, the woman and the Cape Verdean feeling of abandonment and return to the islands, in a journey that started in “Cais do Sodré” and ended in “Salamansa”.
With characters that embody the islands, for their identity, for their language (expressions, forms of treatment, songs, everyday habits), for the difficulty and hardship of life, and for the subtlety dichotomous, physical and figurative, between the character that leaves the space of the archipelago and the one that remains, “estando em exílio, contrapõem a todo tempo a memória de sua identidade cabo-verdiana às modificações causadas pela distância espacial e temporal, e essa distância vai se inserindo nas suas filiações identitárias” (Silva, 2010: 63), Orlanda Amarílis offers a reflection on “questões importantes do cenário sociocultural cabo-verdiano como, por exemplo, a ressignificação da identidade cultural, a violência de gênero, a opressão sofrida pelas mulheres, a solidão, a emigração” (Deus, 2020: 80).
From Cais do Sodré to Salamansa, we highlight what we can consider a synthesis of the writing of Orlanda Amarílis. In the final part of the short story “Salamansa”, Antoninha “garganteia com sabura” (Amarílis, 1991: 82) a song in Creole, which is a motto to invoke the beach of Salamansa, communion with the sea and the emigrant Linda, a girl from “rua do Cavoquinho” (Amarílis, 1991: 80), who symbolizes the difficulties of the life of the women of the islands: “Oh, Salamansa, praia de ondas soltas e barulhentas como meninas intentadas em dia de S. João. Oh, Salamansa, de peixe frito nos pratos cobertos no fundo dos balaios e canecas de milho ilhado por titia em caldeiras com areia quente. Areia de Salamansa, Linda a rolar na areia” (Amarílis, 1991: 82).
Of the author’s works, we have to mention, in addition to Cais do Sodré té Salamansa, Ilhéu dos pássaros (1982), A casa dos Mastros (1989), Facécias e Peripécias (1990), A tartaruguinha (1997).
References
Amarílis, Orlanda (1991). Cais do Sodré té Salamansa. Linda-a-Velha: ALAC.
Deus, Lílian Paula Serra e (2020). Orlanda Amarílis, Vera Duarte e Dina Salústio: a tessitura da escrita de autoria feminina na ficção cabo-verdiana. In Regina Dalcastagnè (Dir.). Veredas – Revista da Associação Internacional de Lusitanistas, nº 33. Coimbra: Associação Internacional de Lusitanistas. 74-87.
Figueira, Paulo (2014).Estudo Lexical sobre Cais do Sodré Té Salamansa, de Orlanda Amarílis. In Marcelino de Castro (Dir.). Islenha, nº 55. Funchal: DRAC. 63-74.
Laban, Michel (1992). Cabo Verde: encontro com escritores. Vol. I. Porto: Fundação Engenheiro António de Almeida.
Laranjeira, Pires (1987). Formação e desenvolvimento das literaturas africanas de língua portuguesa. In Literaturas africanas de língua portuguesa. Lisboa: Fundação Calouste Gulbenkian, 15-24.
Mariano, Gabriel (1991). Cultura caboverdeana – ensaios. Lisboa: Vega.
Silva, Elisa Maria Taborda da (2010). Cais do Sodré té Salamansa: o cabo-verdiano em exílio. In Beatriz Junqueira Guimarães (Ed.). Cadernos CESPUC de Pesquisa, nº 19. Belo Horizonte: Pontifícia Universidade Católica de Minas Gerais. 61-70.
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