Introduction to Cape Verdean Selections

Abstract

Cape Verde, home to the first permanent European settlement in the tropics, is a place characterized by centuries of cultural contact caused by European and North African settlement and the forced migration of West African slaves. The country long played a role as a waystation between Africa, Europe, and the Americas, though it was rarely a final destination. In academia’s near obsession over origins, Cape Verde has been referred to, problematically, as the site of the first Creole culture and language. Yet the country remains relatively unknown in the scholarly canon, especially in Anglophone circles. The official language of Cape Verde, a Portuguese colony until achieving independence in 1975, remains Portuguese, the language of government, business, education, and most media. Cape Verdean Creole (CVC), on the other hand, is the mother tongue and vernacular of the country’s entire population. CVC has always been an immensely important means of communication in Cape Verde where, previously, literacy was denied to much of the population, and in the Cape Verdean Diaspora, which is vast and far-flung and has limited access to the Portuguese language. The urban educated elite has nevertheless produced a rich written literature in Portuguese, an interesting counterpoint to the abundant CVC oral tradition on the islands, and, as education has spread to the population following independence, the volume of written work has ballooned. Writing in Cape Verdean Creole has also increased steadily since its beginnings in the late 1800s, with the post-independence development of a new, governmentratified orthographic system, linguistic studies, and educational opportunities (most prevalent in the Diaspora), and, more informally, with the popularity of internet communications in the language. Cape Verdean music, which has reached international audiences through world music networks, is another important site of active CVC language development. When perusing scholarly work on Cape Verdean literature, one tends to encounter two sets of threes, somewhat oversimplified but nevertheless pragmatic for introductory purposes. The first set of three distinguishes the major literary periods or generations as defined by scholars: the early writing, clas-