Lusophone Africa: beyond independence

Abstract

Even the most committed “lusophiles” will find themselves edified following an engagement with Fernando Arenas’s Lusophone Africa: Beyond Independence. This sweeping account of lusophone Africa, examined via analyses of musical, filmic, and literary expression, showcases Arenas’s profound knowledge of these spaces, both as asymmetrical, independent nations and as a postcolonial collective. In fact, Arenas is keenly interested in the ways that the five countries that comprise lusophone Africa “have been shaped by the myriad phenomena associated with postcolonialism and globalization” (xv). This focus necessitates a nuanced assessment of not only the specificities of the Portuguese colonial experience, but also the ways that contemporary lusophone Africans interact with, and are shaped by, the (former) metropole, the Southern Atlantic lusophone behemoth, Brazil, nonlusophone Africa, and, given the analytical attention granted to globalization, the Global North. The book is at its best when Arenas is deftly weighing and weaving together this seemingly dizzying array of local, regional, and global influences on forms of cultural expression to illustrate how lusophone African artists, artisans, and, by extension, the citizens of the constituent nations, have experienced, and continue to experience, independence. Beyond offering a creative, novel amalgamation of lusophone African music, cinema, and literature to more seasoned consumers of cultural expression and analysis, the book will expose many other readers to these topics for the first time. Only a polyglot such as Arenas, who embeds his English translations of Portuguese, Cape Verdean Kriolu, and Bissau-Guinean Kriol into the text, would be capable of effectively introducing these subjects to anglophone audiences. Indeed, the breadth of songs, music, and written materials originally crafted in these languages that Arenas has accessed, coupled with analyses that are informed by a