Between the Impossibility to Name and the Art of Suggestion. The Said and the Unsaid in the Short Story “A China Fica Ao Lado” by Maria Ondina Braga

Abstract

In the short story “A China fica ao lado”, published in 1968, Maria Ondina Braga tells the story of an anonymous, exiled woman who seeks a doctor to perform an abortion. The narrative focuses on a practice prohibited both in Macau, where the story takes place, and in Portugal, until 2007. In this essay, we are interested in analyzing the way in which the author approaches this topic. We analyze the strategies used by the author to narrate a traumatic event in a woman's life, without naming it, using what Regina Louro called the 'art of suggestion'. We reflect about and create explanatory hypotheses for the author's choice to use the strategies we identified as a way of narrating. To conclude, we use feminist criticism to question whether the author's art of narration, which continued beyond the 25th of April 1974, contributes to the invisibility of women, their experiences, and the violence they suffer, or whether it constitutes a way of giving visibility to these situations.