RE-EXPLORING THE EMPIRE : MARIA ONDINA BRAGA’S JOURNEYS TO MACAO AND OTHER PLACES帝國重探：昂迪娜．布拉加的澳門與別國之旅
Claire Williams examines Maria Ondina Braga’s travel- and memoir-based writing as a narrative space where physical displacement and psychic temporalization occur in tandem. Departing from the common bifurcation of Braga’s oeuvre into “Macao and other places” texts versus non-travel works, the articl...
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| Published in: | Review of Culture |
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| Format: | Articles |
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Instituto Cultural de Macau
January 2009
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| Online Access: | https://www.icm.gov.mo/rc/viewer/pdfViewerParts/40029/3628 |
| Summary: | Claire Williams examines Maria Ondina Braga’s travel- and memoir-based writing as a narrative space where physical displacement and psychic temporalization occur in tandem. Departing from the common bifurcation of Braga’s oeuvre into “Macao and other places” texts versus non-travel works, the article re-reads her journeys to Portuguese outposts—especially Macao—together with her formative memories. Drawing on travel-writing theory to address the difficulty of genre definition, Williams treats Braga’s autobiographical prose (including works labeled “romanceada autobiografia,” diary forms, crónicas, and memoir) as literary artifacts that mediate between fact and fiction, autobiography and a quasi-ethnographic gaze.
Methodologically, the study foregrounds close reading of narrative strategies—fragmentation, shifts between impression and personal history, ambiguous subject placement, and the baroque-psychological style—to show how Braga simultaneously makes the strange familiar and the familiar strange. Williams argues that, despite the apparent freedom and wonder of her travels, Braga’s movements were driven by educational and economic necessity rather than tourism, positioning the author as both resident and observer at the empire’s margins. Ultimately, the article concludes that Braga’s concurrent “dislocations” narrate a persistent, though unsuccessful, search for identity, revealing parallels between lived history and literary construction. |
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| ISSN: | 1682-1106 |