Savia Vegas' Let Me Tell You About Quinta

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INTRODUCTION
Regional identities have always been dominant features of Indian cultural matrix. Goa has a unique culture. The literature of the region reveals its identity. The liberation of Goa brought a new vigour into its literature. The writer’s contact with the reality of life became more alive. Goa’s freedom movement and indignation at the injustice, economic inequality and Goan immigration were common themes in fiction in Goa. Goans have been through a long denationalizing colonial experience which still affects both the social reality and the psyche. There is a regional consciousness in the fiction. The writers have depicted regional flavour. It is significant to note that Lambert Mascarenhas won critical acclaims for his pre-liberation, socio political novel –Sorrowing Lies My Land (1955). The diasporic novelists such as Leslie de Noronha, Peter Nazareth, Victor Rangel-Ribeiro, Lino Leitao Margaret Mascarenhas and Ben Antao are known internationally. They wrote sincerely and passionately.
Methodology
The elements of local colour literature are taken into consideration while analyzing the novel Let Me Tell You About Quinta. As perceptively observed by Josephine Donovan “Local colour literature is characterized by a realistic focus upon a particular geographical locale, its native customs, its physical and cultural environment and its regional dialect”. (European Local Color- literature) This form in writing was dominant in American Literature between the Civil war and the end of the 19th century. These are the distinguishing traits and characteristics of the local colour literature. The characters are marked by their adherence to the old ways by dialect and by particular personality t...

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...ilets that they would rather clean toilets than till the land. (Viegas,211)
This fascination of youth for the west is brought out by Viegas vividly. The ending of the novel strikes a note of despair in the utterances of Preciosa “once they go westward they never return.”

Works cited
Primary source
Viegas, Savia. Let Me Tell You About Quinta. Penguin books, New Delhi, 2011. Print
All subsequent references with page numbers are from this edition.
Secondary sources
Antao, Ben. Goan Literature in English. Muse India, 54 : March April 2014. Web. 1st March 2014 .
Donovan Josephine. “Introduction”. European Local Color-Literature. Bloomsbury Publishing London. 2010. Web 20/04/2103.
Goa News Desk. Press Releases. “Tales from the Attic Released”. Savia Viegas, 2010. Web. 16/09/ 2013.
Viegas, Savia. Biography. Savia Viegas 2010. WEB. 3/02/ 2014.

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