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At the Lisbon Plate
作者Author  /  Dionne  Brand  布蘭德

At the Lisbon Plate

 
 Historical background

 How do minorities fight against limitations at a corner of the city?  

 What the bar represents

 
 Historical background
  Lisbon -- the capital of Portugal.
1. Angola's independence:

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"In 1974, a group of young Portuguese colonels overthrew the Lisbon government. The coup
 precipitated the collapse o f Portuguese empire as the new government hastily granted independence to its colonies. Following negotiations in Portugal, Angola's three main opposition parties agreed to establish a transitional government in January 1975. Within two months, however, the FNLA, MPLA and UNITA were fighting each other and the country was well on its way to being divided into zones controlled by rival political groups.

 By the end of the year more than 90 percent of the white settlers had left Angola, draining the country of most of its skilled and semi-skilled work force. Many of the 300,000 departing Portuguese deliberately destroyed some of the country's infrastructure rather than turn factories, plantations and transportation over to the An golans.

 Portugal granted Ang ola its independence on November 11, 1975.

2. Camus' The Stranger
'Camus, who fought all his life for a just society in which the two communities could live in harmony, was never able to make an Arab come alive in his fiction. Here, the scene is typical: 'They watched us silently, but in their special way, no more or no less than if we were stoned or dead trees." '

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 How do minorities fight against limitations at a corner of the city?  
 
  • Elaine's way ("African princess")-- leaving the city and going back to Africa;
  • the narrator's -- drinking, story-telling, the use of juju and voodon, continuation of Caribbean culture in the city but not going back.

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 What the bar represents
 
  • Rosa p. 95; p. 97; Rosa's brother, a priest p. 97; the narrator to Rosa, p. 101;
  • the bar's position, p. 99
  • the white boy -- the eyes reminding the narrator of the eyes she sees during the middle passage.
  • the others p. 105;
  • the narrator -- see the place as a haven, p. 96;
  • the narrator and the old woman -- her stories made me cry . . . p. 98; p. 102
  • the narrator and Elaine p. 98- ; from the old woman to Elaine, 104;
  • the narrator's stories: p. 99 about the old aunt  p. 100; p. 109; the middle passage p.107; her dreams
    the narrator's revision of L'etranger, the ending

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