<b>On the mirror of the memory: Macau a mythical place of reconstruction of identity in the works of Maria Ondina Braga

Abstract

Born in Braga in January 1932, where she also died (March 2003), the Portuguese writer and translator Maria Ondina Braga travelled to several countries, lived in England, France, India (Goa), Angola, Macau and China. Those existential journeys to different corners of the world are fictionalized into her narratives, as in Estátua de Sal (Braga, 1965b) and A Passagem do Cabo (Braga, 1994) – which will be analyzed in this work. By drawing on imagology we shall discuss the mechanisms used by the narrator in the process of identity reconstruction, through the memory in the midst of alterity and the exotic ‘Other’, having Macao as a scenario.

Keywords

• alteridade
• identidade
• Macau
• imagens
• exotismo
• imagologia
• literatura portuguesa