The Memory of Forgetting

The Memory of Forgetting pays tribute to the victims of the remnants of colonialism in contemporary Portuguese society. The book portrays the lives of a group of inhabitants of a shantytown in the 1990s. Fleeing the civil war unleashed after the independence of their countries and the lack of means of subsistence, the people who give voice to this book seek to rebuild their lives in Portugal. However, around them stands a high wall, built by the forgetting of what Portuguese colonialism was in the last and agonizing times of an undemocratic, repressive and persecutory state. From the silence imposed by the dictatorship, first, and by its subsequent forgetting, an underground memory emerges to which this book gives voice. This underground memory testifies to the segregation that still perpetuates in everyday Portuguese life. This is a portrait of heroes without battles.

Work Details:

• Author: Sílvia Baptista
• Publisher: Chiado Books
• Number of Pages: 252