Here’s the revised version with your requested change:Internationally celebrated author and poet Mia Couto identifies as African, though his heritage lies in , fleeing the authoritarian regime of Antonio Salazar.Couto was born two years later in the coastal city of Beira. »I had a very joyful childhood, » he shares with the Dailyon
team.However, he was keenly aware of living in a « colonial society »—a reality so stark that no one needed to explain the stark divisions between whites and blacks, or the disparities between the rich and the poor.As a child, Couto was painfully shy, unable to express himself in public or even within his own home.Like his father, who was also a poet and journalist, Couto sought refuge in writing.“I created something—a connection with paper. And behind that paper, there was always someone I cherished, someone who acknowledged me, telling me: ‘You exist,’” he explains from his home in Maputo,
Mozambique’s capital, with a vibrant painting and wooden sculpture set against a deep mustard-yellow wall in the background.Although of European descent, Couto felt most at ease among the black elite in Mozambique under Portuguese colonialism—the « assimilados »—those deemed « civilized » enough, in the racist terminology of the time, to be granted Portuguese citizenship.He considers himself fortunate to have played with the children of assimilados and to have learned some of their
languages.This, he says, helped him blend in with the black majority.“I only remember that I’m white when I’m outside Mozambique. Within Mozambique, it’s something that barely crosses my mind,” he remarks.Still, as a child, he was conscious of how his whiteness set him apart.“Nobody needed to teach me about the injustice… the inequity of the society I lived in. And I thought: ‘I can’t be true to myself, I can’t be happy, without standing against this,’” he reflects.
