Maria Firmina dos Reis: Brazil's first abolitionist writer
Maria Firmina dos Reis (1822-1917) was an important Brazilian writer of the XIX century. It was first published in Latin America.
Além disso, the author was responsible for inaugurate or abolitionist romance Not Brazil, being an important voice of denunciation and indignation against the smothered maus-tracts against the escaped populace. Assim, she has essential paper na luta pela libertação do povo negro.
Biography of Maria Firmina dos Reis
Maria Firmina was born on March 11, 1822, on Ilha de São Luís, not Maranhão. His mother, Leonor Filipa dos Reis, was white and hers, black. Maria was registered for some three years since her birth, in 1825, and has been registered in her document or name of another homem as her country.
A menina was raised by an irmã de sua mãe, who has better financial conditions. By default, she can study and since nova I have contacted you with literature. It is even clear that one of her relatives, Sotero dos Reis, was a great scholar of grammar at the time.
Maria Firmina was also a teacher, passing in a public contest for preencher to vacancy of teacher not in primary school of Guimarães-MA. Or fate ocorreu when he was 25 years old, in 1847.
It did not begin two years in 1880, she also exercised the role of educator to found a school for men and women born in Maçaricó (MA). Nessa instituição, she tends to revolutionize the pedagogical line, as a more human ensino. In the meantime, she was rejected from the school for a short time, not after three years of operation.
Throughout her life she dedicated herself to scrubbing and teaching. She has stories, poems, essays and other texts published during the period. Maria was also an important researcher of traditional traditions, collecting and recording elements of the povo culture, also being a folklorist.
Maria Firmina lived in 1917, when she died at the age of 95, born in Guimarães (MA). No fim gives life to a writer who is blind and has financial resources.
Due to the design, it is not known exactly what Firmina dos Reis's feição was like. There is no photograph that proves her true physiognomy and, for a long time, she was portrayed as a white woman, with fine traces and straight hair.
It is worth mentioning that it has a statute in São Luís (MA) in its honor. Or physical bust located in Praça do Pantheon along with other writers from Maranhão, being the only one dedicated to a woman.
Romance Ursula
Em 1859, Maria Firmina publicou o romance Ursula, or first of female authorship in Latin America, and that was launched under the pseudonym of "uma maranhense".
This is more known from the author, published in a rather complicated time from a social point of view, when the writing was still present, a reality rejected by Maria Firmina.
A history was a pioneer to position itself as anti-escravagista, before the same poem Negreiro Ship, by Castro Alves, from 1869 e do romance To escrava Isaura, by Bernardo Guimarães, from 1875.
O romance portrays the love story between young Úrsula and the rapacious Tancredo, a common theme at the time. Meanwhile, the writer drew other very important figures, also recounting Suzana's drama, a scrawled woman, apart from other catives. Há ainda or cruel senhor de escravos named Fernando, placed as a portrait of oppression.
Em a passagem do romance, a personagem Suzana says:
It is horrible to see that human creatures treat their fellow men even as they are not conscious of raising them to the grave asphyxiated and famished.
Regardless of the romance, it is given to the extent that it was the first to approach the issue of the scraping through the point of view of a black woman, overcoat of a black woman.
Nele, Firmina unfolds a narrative committed to a racial question and a strongly political intuition.
Outras outstanding works of Firmina dos Reis
Two years after the launch of Ursula, It is published not a regional newspaper or first chapter of Gupeva (1861), a narrative that addressed an indigenous question in the 18th century. This story was published in chapters throughout the decade.
Já em 1887, Firmina dos Reis lança TOescrava, history with thematic also abolitionist and, dessa vez, loading a more critical year or regime in force at the time.
It is curious that, even as a black woman, she has some space not intellectual. Or that it was very incomum, due to the historical context in which she found herself, in a escravocrat Brazil and post-independent from Portugal.
In any case, she only had recognition of the 20th century and, at present, her work and her legacy is being revisited and rediscovered.
Video about Maria Firmina dos Reis
Check out below a video of the historian and anthropologist Lilia Schwarcz telling a little about the history and importance of Maria Firmina dos Reis.
Conheça also
- Or Navio Negreiro, by Castro Alvos
- Carolina Maria de Jesus, life and work
- Quarto de Despejo, by Carolina Maria de Jesus
- Black writers that you need to know
