This edited collection aims to identify memories and perceptions of African subjects who lived the process of struggle for independence and the experience of colonial wars, shaping their identity on the negotiation between personal memory and the narrative proposed by official history. It also includes memories of those who have experienced these periods in the colonial metropolis, which allow the contributors to compare the narratives centered on European memories of Africa and what was experienced in the African continent. The book explores how oral culture can become the domestic space of people who had to leave the African continent and had to recreate their identities inside a different society, quite often the colonizers’ one, and how their life abroad has been shaped by the recreation of their linguistic social and culture paradigm through the memory of their oral culture.

Francesca Negro is an integrated member of the Institute of Ethnomusicology - Centre of Studies in Music and Dance (INET-md) at Nova University and associated researcher of Centre for Comparative Studies (CEComp) of the University of Lisbon (Portugal), where she also taught Intercultural Communication and Inter-art Studies.

Inocência Mata is Associate professor, School of Arts and Humanities (SOAH), University of Lisbon (Portugal), Senior member of the Centre for Comparative Studies (CEComp), and Coordinator of African Studies ERASMUS Program.