Women, rights and culture: Readings of the female condition in Mia Couto

Abstract

The issue of women and their status in society continues to be addressed and discussed globally. African women have been and are associated with oppression, marginalization and discrimination. In this article, the intention is to bring to the discussion the importance of the written text in the fight against discrimination and awareness of difference, specifically in Mozambique, through the work of the writer Mia Couto. Mozambique presents a society with a mosaic of peoples and cultures, which contributes to social tensions due to the great diversity of cultural traditions. The experiences of Portuguese colonialization, independence, civil war and the importance that local communities and patriarchy still hold, contribute to and define the status of Mozambican women. The aim here is to analyze the various strategies of Mozambican women to respond to and react to the situations of discrimination and annulment that they suffer and how the works in question portray the condition of women in Mozambique. Mia Couto’s works testify to the rebirth of the female characters and alert to situations of continuous submission, while sensitizing the difference of gender, race, ethnicity, culture and others. In this text the feminine figures in the narratives/novels Um rio chamado tempo, uma casa chamada terra (2002), Jesusalém (2009) and A Confissão da Leoa (2012) will be analyzed, but without excluding the possibility of resorting to other narratives that will enrich this analysis.