ABSTRACT

This chapter looks at the Angolan diaspora in Portugal through the literary works of three of its most recently acclaimed writers, Kalaf Epalanga’s Também os Brancos Sabem Dançar (2018); Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida’s Esse Cabelo (2015) and Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso (2018); and Yara Monteiro’s Essa Dama Bate Bué (2018). Appearing in the literary scene less than a decade ago, these new Angolan diasporic voices are not only changing how post-imperial Portugal looks at its African communities but paving the way for a space where African voices can be heard as well as being able to claim their place in History. Borrowing from Johny Pitts’s Afropean: Notes from Black Europe (2019), I aim to correlate these new Angolan diasporic voices in a broader European context by showing epistemological and corporal aesthetic forms of resistance to ongoing forms of coloniality. I aim to show this by interweaving social, historiographic, and anthropologic studies with literary works of fiction.