Metaphors of the nation and the migrant experience in Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso and Também os brancos sabem dançar

Abstract

African diasporas and migrations contributed to the production of a literature starring individuals whose experience of displacement and the feeling of non-belonging manifest the need to build an identity regarding the demands of the new territory. How to be a foreigner, feeling at home? The nation's metaphors are a concept that aims to reflect on signs that allow citizens outside their native territory to maintain the link with the elements that were part of the construction of their national identity such as language, music, literature. The study is based on the experiences of the characters in the novels Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso (2019), by Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida and Também os brancos sabem dançar (2018), by Kalaf Epalanga. Initially, a theoretical discussion is elaborated for the formulation of the concept of metaphor of the nation, based on Literary Theory which, in an interdisciplinary dialogue with other areas of knowledge such as Sociology, Geography, Philosophy and History, analyzes the presence of these metaphors in the lives of migrant characters.