Deolinda da Conceição: Macau's pioneering Macanese woman writer and journalist

Deolinda da Conceição (1913–1957) is regarded as Macau's first Macanese woman writer and journalist. Writing in Portuguese, she ran a women's column in a Macau newspaper. In 1956 she published her only book, the short-story collection Cheong-Sam — A Cabaia, centred on the fate and suffering of Chinese women, regarded as a pioneering work of Macanese Portuguese-language literature.

A Macanese woman who took up the pen in an age when women rarely had a public voice, and with a single book — Cheong-Sam — bore witness to the fate of Chinese women.

Deolinda da Conceição is regarded as Macau's first Macanese woman writer and journalist. Writing in Portuguese, her short-story collection Cheong-Sam is a pioneering work of Macanese Portuguese-language literature.

Profile

• Chinese Name: 德蓮娜·達·康塞桑
• Portuguese Name: Deolinda da Conceição
• Born: c. 1913 (Macau; some sources give 1914)
• Died: 1957
• Region: Macao
• Domains: Culture (Literature · Journalism)
• Subject type: Macanese · Writer · Journalist

Background

The Macanese (土生葡人, Macaense) are a community that took root in Macau over centuries, blending Portuguese and Chinese ancestry and culture. Deolinda was born in Macau around 1913 into a Macanese family, with a Portuguese-descent father and a Macanese mother. She grew up in that Sino-Portuguese world and, in an age when women rarely had a public voice, made her living in teaching, journalism, and literature.

Work & Career

I. Woman journalist and columnist

Deolinda earned her living teaching Portuguese and working in journalism, writing a women's column in a Macau newspaper and regarded as Macau's first Macanese woman journalist. She observed society from a woman's perspective, gathering the material and concerns that would shape her later fiction.

II. Cheong-Sam — A Cabaia

In 1956 she published her only book, the short-story collection Cheong-Sam — A Cabaia, at the Livraria Francisco Franco in Lisbon. The title takes its name from the traditional dress worn by Chinese women (the cheongsam), and the stories centre on the domestic violence and oppression endured by Chinese women, portraying their fate in the first half of the twentieth century. Scholars read it as a symbol of the subaltern condition of the Chinese woman, and as a pioneering work of Macanese Portuguese-language literature.

Connection to Macau

Deolinda's writing is rooted in Macau's Sino-Portuguese society, drawing on the dual perspective of a Macanese woman to look both at the Portuguese-speaking world and at the fate of Chinese women. She is regarded as one of the founders of women's writing in Macau, leaving the city's literature a distinctive female voice.