Rwanda, country of tears: reflections on loss, memory and narrative in Cockroaches, by Scholastique Mukasonga

• Autor(a) principal: Silveira, Alexandre Henrique
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Amorim, Bernardo Nascimento de
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: por
• Título da fonte: Terra Roxa e Outras Terras: Revista de Estudos Literários
• Texto Completo: https://ojs.uel.br/revistas/uel/index.php/terraroxa/article/view/41429
• topic: Scholastique Mukasonga; Loss; Memory; Autobiographical narrative; Scholastique Mukasonga; Perda; Memória; Narrativa autobiográfica

The article intends to think of loss as a central component in the autobiography Cockroaches, by Scholastique Mukasonga, considering the history of Rwanda, marked by colonization, and the search for a Rwandan memory. According to Richard Oko Ajah (2015), the writer’s works that address ethnic conflict in Rwanda are narratives of memory and trauma, which denounce the conditions culminating in a structural trauma suffered by Tutsis over decades of violence and segregation until the 1994 genocide. The loss and absence of her own, haunting the author, narrator and surviving character of the massacre, made her take the position of guardian of her people’s memory. It is thought that the traumatic experience, characterizing the testimonial content of Cockroaches, leads the writer to seek, through remembrance (Gagnebin 2006), a way of acting in the present to fight the forgetfulness and the repetition of the horrors of the past, humanizing herself through art.