No More Invisible Marias: A Decolonial Interpretation of Luísa Semedo’s “Eu empresto-te a Mariá” (2020) and Manuella Bezerra de Melo’s Um Fado Atlântico (2022)

Abstract

No More Invisible Marias: A Decolonial Interpretation of Luísa Semedo’s “Eu empresto-te a Mariá” (2020) and Manuella Bezerra de Melo’s Um Fado Atlântico (2022)

Although the postcolonial European imaginary describes multicultural European societies, this trait was built at the expense of cheap workforce, often considered easily assimilated and integrated (Jerónimo & Monteiro 2020). As Víctor Pereira (2015) argues on the Portuguese case, emigrants were never heard. This article discusses “Eu empresto-te a Mariá” and Um Fado Atlântico whose protagonists are immigrant women servants, and argues that these narratives question the patriarchal and classist mindset underlying the neocolonial power over the Other, the immigrant woman in this case. The humanizing narrative representation of the immigrant woman is an act of resistance that deconstructs the postcolonial and capitalist myth of integration.