Goans have moved across continents for generations. In his new book, R. Benedito Ferrão uses literary references to look at how this history of migration has affected ideas of identity and belonging
CHRISTINE MACHADO
For centuries, Goa was part of the Portuguese colonial empire, becoming part of India only in 1961. This colonial history connected Goa to other parts of the world and often facilitated the movement of Goans to other regions.
“From the 19th century, Goans responded to the declining economy in Estado da Índia by using their Portuguese citizenship status to travel transimperially and even transcontinentally. While elite Goans may seem to have benefited most from these developments, it must be said that subaltern Goans also navigated these difficult circumstances with varying degrees of success,” says R. Benedito Ferrão, associate professor of English and Asian and Pacific Islander American Studies at William and Mary, Virginia, USA.
After Goa became part of India, Goans acquired a new citizenship. However, Ferrão says, while there was an attachment to their homeland, and this did not necessarily change how they saw themselves. “They held on to older identities, often multiple ones,” he says.
In an attempt to understand these layers, Ferrão decided to examine how literary representation can shed light on the identities of marginalised communities. His new book, ‘Across Continents: Writing Goans, Making Worlds’ (University of Michigan Press, 2026), grew out of his doctoral work and subsequent research and teaching.
In the book, he writes about both the Goan presence in Africa and the African presence in Goa. Explanations for these diasporas, he says, can be found in the humanities and social sciences, as well as historical evidence. “But what these fields of study are unable to account for are the affective lives of ordinary diasporic subjects. How did ambition, loss and love factor into their lived experience? What did it mean to leave a familiar land behind, remake home in a new continent and then be exiled to yet another foreign place?” asks Ferrão.
While the references he draws on are works of fiction, he believes they can help us understand the past. “It still gives reality a shape, especially when the unrecorded past is something we can only know by approximation,” he says.
Ferrao states that he wanted to understand how fiction with a historical basis portrays the displacement of minority subjects, particularly those whose movements are driven by political events. “What is the relationship of the nation to the displaced individual? This question becomes all the more pertinent when the Goan subject does not seem to belong properly to any one place, thereby querying the conceptual limits of nationality and citizenship.”
Most of the books discussed in ‘Across Continents’ are by non-Goan authors, including Salman Rushdie, M. G. Vassanji and Roger King, as well as Goan writer Margaret Mascarenhas. He says, “In these works, the Goan is a vital figure in manifesting a crisis of belonging, sometimes for themselves and often for others. He adds that the Goan became a literary device because Goans always seem to be in excess of nation.
“For these authors, the Goan crosses continents, empires and oceans. In these novels, as in real life, the Goan is sometimes a European in Africa and sometimes an African in Asia. The Goan’s presence shows that national identity alone cannot define belonging,” he posits.
Over the years of researching and writing the book, Ferrão was supported by grants and fellowships that allowed him to travel to some of the locations he writes about, including Zanzibar, Kenya, England and Goa.
The challenge, however, was getting the book published because it defies easy categorisation.
“Generally, research on postcolonialism has an Anglocentric bias. What sets ‘Across Continents’ apart is its focus on the understudied role of Portuguese colonialism in South Asia and Africa. It also explores Indian Ocean slavery and its links between Portuguese India and Africa,” he explains. “The book looks at diasporic South Asian subjects alongside other communities and locations. Finding a press that would take on such a wide-ranging subject, at a time when the publishing industry is in such a state of crisis, was a challenge.”
The book was ultimately published in the African Perspectives series at the University of Michigan Press. Ferrão says the series is a fitting home for the book and shows how different fields can be brought together to study Goa and Goans.
And Ferrão believes more needs to be done to facilitate the study of Goan history and heritage.
“I learned that Goa University may have had one intermittently offered Goan diasporic literature course and while there are inclusions of a few works by Goan writers in schools and colleges, there are no dedicated courses on Goan literature taught in Goa on a regular basis, with the exception of limited and not very diverse offerings of Goan literature in Konkani, and to say even less of what is available in Marathi and Portuguese,” he says.
He also points to gaps in the teaching of Goan film, theatre and art history in the region’s educational programmes.
“I am not maintaining that simply instituting literary and cultural curricula is enough to bolster awareness of and engagement with the Goan humanities but the dearth in this area is an apparent issue,” he says. “Goans need to engage more with their own literary and cultural heritage and this requires institutional change.”
