O livro da paz da mulher angolana: as narrativas testemunhais das heroínas do povo (1961 - 2008)

Abstract

At first, our concern was to understand how Angolan women were integrated into the political project of forming the Angolan nation. Thus, we present as a working proposal an interpretation of women’s unequal access to national citizenship based on O Livro da Paz da mulher angolana: As heroínas sem nome (2008). Beyond the process of cultural mediation—through semistructured interviews conducted by the Non-Governmental Organization Norwegian People’s Aid (hereafter NGO NPA) - the women who gave their testimony speak for themselves and expose the violence they have suffered. Thus, we consider the fragments of memory in O Livro da Paz da mulher angolana: As heroínas sem nome to be life experiences narrated in the form of testimonial literature. The feminine experiences recalled in these narratives provide clues and evidence that support our understanding of social roles and how women perceive their place in Angolan society after the country’s long history of the national liberation struggle. The documentary corpus reveals social relations stigmatized by gender inequality and female resistance to various forms of violence. We understand that O Livro da Paz da mulher angolana: As heroínas sem nome (2008) presents a perspective from ordinary women, heroines of the people, as survivors of a long period of wars—women who undertake and rebuild both their own lives and the country itself. In this documentary and bibliographical research of a qualitative nature, we seek to methodologically apply the theory of testimonial literature due to the nature of the source. For this purpose, we used the technique of creating an explanatory framework of the testimonial narratives to support the data collection and analysis. The main theoretical and methodological contributions were the intellectual works of the following authors: Sylvia Walby (2000; Maria Lugones (2020); Márcio Seligmann-Silva (1998;2005;2022); Aleida Assmann (2011), among others. The testimonies of Angolan women in O Livro da Paz da mulher angolana: As heroínas sem nome contribute to the construction of historical knowledge. However, this is not a defense of absolute truth, but rather of how the subjects of their own history understand their social and cultural reality. And in this context, they intervene by advocating for behavioral change, including the introduction of female-led sexual re-education for men. In this way, changes in thought are evidenced, producing new meanings and significance for the place of women in Angolan society. Thus, through the plural voices of Angolan women in O Livro da Paz da mulher angolana: As heroínas sem nome (2008), we present as the result of our research a cultural memory of the heroine as a legacy of the struggle for freedom and emancipation in Angola. We defend the genealogy of the archetype of the heroine as a political and cultural artifact of Angola’s modern nationalism, constructed after the country’s political independence.