Antonio de Assis Júnior

António de Assis Júnior (born March 13, 1877 in Golungo Alto , Portuguese Angola , † May 27, 1960 in Lisbon , Portugal ) was an Angolan or Portuguese journalist, novelist and lawyer. Assis is considered to be one of the most important literary voices in Portuguese Angola at the turn of the 20th century.

Life

António de Assis Júnior was born on March 13, 1877 in Golungo Alto, a small town in the north of what was then the Portuguese colony of Angola.

As a lawyer, Assis mainly advised the local population in order to protect them from exploitation and expropriation by the Portuguese settlers, and was quickly nicknamed "the indigenous lawyer". In 1917 Assis was briefly arrested in Dala Tando because he was accused of inciting the indigenous population to revolt against the colonial administration. He narrowly escaped deportation.

Writing

As a journalist and novelist, he primarily promoted political and social reforms in the colony and at the same time campaigned against forced labor and abuse. Assis is considered to be the first Angolan black or mestiço novelist. Nadine Siegert counts Assis to the "old Creole elite", which played an important role as the cultural avant-garde and saw the writing of literature as a political obligation at the time of early nationalism. The main goal, according to Siegert, was the revaluation of the past and the inclusion of the story transmitted through oral tradition.

His novel O Segredo da Morta (The Secret of the Dead), published in 1934, describes racial conflicts and issues of assimilation in Angola in the 1890s. The novel is subtitled Romance de Costumes Angolanos to make it clear that it is actually about the Angolan reality (and not that of the Portuguese colonialists). According to Russell G. Hamilton, Assis cites numerous local cultural references in the Luanda, Sengue and Dondo regions in the work. He also used numerous words and phrases from the Kimbundu . By linking orally transmitted knowledge and its written form, the novel impressively shows the onset of modernity as well as cultural and social developments in Angola, which lead to a changed reality of life for the local population.

In addition to his extensive journalistic work, Assis also published a dictionary of Portuguese / Kimbundu and in 1917 a work called Relato dos Acontencimentos de Ndalatando e Lucala , in which he describes the increasing harshness of the Portuguese colonial regime.

Political activism

As a political activist, Assis founded the Liga Angola , part of the Liga Nacional Africa , an association to strengthen the Angolan identity. The then governor of Angola, Norton de Matos , had the association forbidden and Assis deported with other fellow campaigners. More independence activists then went underground, a similar organization was formed again in 1929-30 under the name Liga Nacional Africa .

Due to his numerous publications and the associated commitment, the Portuguese colonial administration decided to arrest Assis and deport him to the metropolis, Portugal. Assis Júnior died there on May 27, 1960.

Web links

• Tereza Paula Alves Calzolari: O Segredo da Morta: Um Roman Feuilleton Angolano (pdf), Universidade Federal do Rio de Janeiro

Individual evidence

1. ↑ ^{a b c d e f g} Orquídea Ribeiro: Assis Júnior, António de . In: Emmanuel K. Akyeampong and Henry Louis Gates, Jr (Eds.): Dictionary of African Biography . tape 1 . Oxford Press, Oxford 2012, ISBN 978-0-19-538207-5 , pp. 286 f .
2. ^ Jacopo Corrado: The Creole Elite and the Rise of Angolan Proto-Nationalism (1870-1920) . Cambria Press, 2008, pp. 209 .
3. ↑ Nadine Siegert: (Re) Mapping Luanda: utopian and nostalgic approaches to a collective image archive . LTA Verlag, Münster 2016, ISBN 978-3-643-13458-5 , p. 59 .
4. ^ Antonio de Assis Júnior. União dos Escritores Angolanos, accessed December 22, 2019 (Portuguese). 
5. ↑ Assis Júnior eo segredo since morta - Relações intertextuais e biográficas. In: arrugamao.sóvisto.com. May 27, 2017. Retrieved December 22, 2019 (Portuguese).