Cape Verde in the female: the short fiction of Dina Salustio/ Cabo Verde no feminino: a ficcao curta de Dina Salustio

The purpose of this article is to develop an analysis of the short story Sapatos de Verniz, by Cape Verdean writer Dina Salustio. The short story chosen here is part of the collection Children of God (2018). The short fiction by Dina Salustio gives visibility to the situations of existential conflict of Cape Verdean women through the affectionate relations with the nation, with the insularities and with the transits of nationalities. To support the analyzes, we will anchor in the critical positions of Vera Duarte (2005) and Dina Salustio on Cape Verdean writing by Chimamanda Adchie (2015) on feminism, by Judith Butler (2003) on gender problematization, by Michel Foucault (1979) on genealogy and history, Silvana Vilodre Goellner (2015) on representation of the body, Clenora Hudson-Weems (2020) on African womanism and Oyeronke Oyewumi (2021) on gender colonization. The story under analysis leads us to the conclusion that the patent shoes represent the tightening in human conscience to the point of questioning the affections so tainted by the colonization of class and gender, with love being the only possibility of humanization.