Saudade, loss and longing in Katherine Vaz’s short fiction
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.51427/com.est.2024.03.02.0005Palavras-chave:
Absence-presence, Fate, Memory, Saudade, TemporalityResumo
This article examines markers of loss and longing in Katherine Vaz’s short fiction through two short stories from her collections: “My Bones Here Are Waiting for Yours” (Our Lady of the Artichokes [2008]), and “Blue Flamingo Looks at Red Water” (The Love Life of an Assistant Animator [2016]), both which explore how the loss of a child affects its mother. Loss, longing, and temporality are key elements in these stories, opening avenues for thinking about saudade as an expanded sense of dislocation that is by no means culturally exclusive. These elements in Vaz’s texts bring a “new tone” to experiences of loss, as memories accompanying the dislocating effects of loss also allow pain to be overcome and revised. From the standpoint of the future, Vaz’s characters gain a shifted comprehension of unjust and unavoidable events; amidst the chaos of sadness and dislocation, saudade plays a pivotal role in recasting notions of fate and fatality.
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