Narratives that challenge silences: an interpretation of Antes de nascer o mundo, by Mia Couto

Abstract

This article is about the silences that occur in texts, more specifically in literary texts and the symbolic territory of the spoken and silenced word. The constellation formed by the (un)real, the imaginary and the imagination produces different worlds that form a labyrinth of relationships that may be punctuated by life and death. In this paper, we analyze the literary work Antes de nascer o mundo by the Mozambican Mia Couto (2009) with its multiple incarnations of silence that challenge concepts such as memory, identity and tradition. It is understood that the writing of Mia Couto is transgressive, configuring echoes of the silences, as with the narrator Mwanito, who provides meaning to the silenced stories; both to the stories resulting from the imposition of the colonial process and to other stories that arise from the construction of an imagined community after the war, formed in an attempt to forget the violent process of colonization.