HYBRID IDENTITY IN MULHERES DE CINZAS, DE MIA COUTO

Abstract

The study Hybrid identity in Mulheres de Cinzas (2015), by Mia Couto, is divided into to parts: 1) the historical, geostrategic and military situation  of Mozambique at the end of the 19th century and 2) the echoes in the novel by Mia Couto, which adresses the issue of hybrid belonging and the crisis of social identification of the black Imani, a woman immersed in the relations of exploitation in her own clan and in the Portuguese colonial ideology. The research highlights, on the one hand, the concepts of “historiographic metaficcion” (Linda Hutcheon), the question of the hybrid (Cleonice Flois), assimilation and the crisis of identification of young people from the Vachopi ethnic group and, on the other hand, the theory of cultural identity, by Stuart Hall, that of “male domination”, by Pierre Bourdieu and that of “colonialitat of power”, by Anibal Quijano. In addition to the reflections of the Mozambican writer, Paulina Chiziane, on the subordination of women, and the conceptions of decolonial feminism, according to Maria Lugones.