Gender and the Circulation of African Lusophone Literature into the Portuguese Literary System

The aim of this chapter is to map out the importance of gender as a mediating category in the circulation of literature, by the example of the migration of Mozambican literature (written in Portuguese) into the contemporary Portuguese book market. As such, it outlines some possible theoretical, methodological and gender political starting points for examining how the contemporary Portuguese literary system conceptualizes and incorporates Mozambican literature into an imagined literary lusophone community. By addressing different parts of this journey, with special attention to literacy and the accessibility to subjective and literary agency, both in writing and in the commodification processes, it shows examples of how a gender analysis can contribute to a deeper understanding of literature’s migration process.