Two books that put you in São Tomé and Príncipe. One, No Gods Live Here, is by a writer from São Tomé and Príncipe and set there. The other is a wider pick, by someone who knows the place well.
Poetry has long been the heart of writing from São Tomé and Príncipe, and very little of it has reached English. It reaches back to Caetano da Costa Alegre, born in 1864. Later poets, among them Francisco José Tenreiro and Alda do Espírito Santo, who wrote the words of the national anthem, took on colonial rule, forced labour on the cocoa estates, or roças, and the 1953 Batepá massacre, before independence from Portugal in 1975. Stories and songs are also shared aloud in three creoles: Forro, Angolar and Principense.
Start with Conceição Lima's No Gods Live Here, translated from Portuguese, the first book-length collection by a woman from São Tomé in English. Her poems move between slavery, the roças, independence and an island childhood among fishermen. Miguel Sousa Tavares's novel Equator sends a Lisbon gentleman to govern the islands in 1905, where he finds slavery thriving on the cocoa plantations.
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Poems by a São Toméan poet on the islands' colonial plantation history, the 1953 Batepá massacre, island landscapes, Creole identity and exile.
By long-time residents and outsiders who know the place well, or folk tales, poetry and history with a strong feel for São Tomé and Príncipe.
Depicts early 20th-century cocoa plantations (roças), colonial forced-labour scandals and Portuguese administration on the islands through a governor's posting from Lisbon.
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