Portuguese-American Literature: Some Thoughts and Questions

Abstract

The Portuguese communities of the United States have been producing a steady flow of creative works both in Portuguese and in English. Usually, these works are considered part of American literature if writ ten in English and of Portuguese literature if written in Portuguese. However, from a sociological point of view one can look at the communities as a single coherent whole expressing itself in two languages. In fact, whether written in English or in Portuguese, these books are received as part of the Portuguese-American world (I have called it L(USA)land) while at the same time dissolving at both ends into the mainstreams of Portuguese and American literary traditions. Given the cultural similarities and proximity between Portuguese communities in Canada and the U.S., they are here treated collectively as North-American Portuguese. home during the African Colonial wars that resulted in the dramatic end of its overseas empire. During those turbulent years, a leftist ideology dominated Portuguese politics and the tradition loving islands of the Azores felt threatened by the changes that questioned their five-century old Counter-Reformation Catholicism. The Azores Islands have had a two-hundred-year relation ship with the United States through various waves of migration to America, with Azoreans settling mostly throughout Southeastern New England and in California. The close relationship between Azoreans in the homeland and the diaspora communities in the U.S. (where at various points over the twentieth century the majority of those born in the Azores have resided) fostered a political alignment between the islands and the United States. Promoting its own geo-strategic self-interest?there is an important U.S. military base in the islands?the U.S. Government also promoted this relationship. This connection of the Azores to its North American diaspora pro voked a serious ideological drift between the islands and Portugal. One culmination of this rift was a liberation movement based in the United States that emerged to threaten the Azores seces sion from the Portuguese State. The political turmoil subsided with a compromise measure when a moderate ruling authority took power in Lisbon through which Azoreans negotiated a constitutional political and eco nomic autonomy from the mainland, although remaining a part of the Portuguese state. In this context, it is understandable that someone from the United States might resurrect the century-old issue of Azorean literature?albeit from a different angle. At the low-point of Azores/Portugal relations, bilingual education was in its heyday in the U.S., with federal guidelines advocating that migrants should be taught in their native language as they learned English, through text books that connected these students to their own worlds. To meet these guidelines for Azorean schoolchildren, it was necessary to provide schools with works by Azorean poets and fiction writers. The initiative, however, met with much resistance across the Atlantic, mostly from main land Portugal, but also including some in the Azores. Political factions opposing independence