12 black women writers you need to read

For a long time, the word belonged to white homens: to them it was possible to disbelieve and define the world, by semelhança or opposition to themselves.

The literary canon is the fruit of the male and white hegemony that dominated all the areas of culture, relegating to the margins the discourses belonging to other identities.

In the last decades, readers and theorists have come to realize that we need more perspectives, other ways of living and writing. We need to read black women, acknowledge their works and their struggles, fight or silence and or silence their history.

1. Maria Firmina dos Reis (1822 - 1917)

Maria Firmina dos Reis, a writer from Maranhão, turned to first romancista brazilian com to publication of Ursula (1859).

The work, centered on the romance between the protagonist Úrsula and Bacharel Tancredo, is demarcated from the literature of the time, revealing the quotidians two escravos, two blacks and women.

Denouncing the practices of a society traversed by injustices and oppression, or free and considered a forerunner of abolitionism e one of the founding works of Afro-Brazilian literature.

Enquanto mulher afrodescencente, Maria Firmina dos Reis trouxe for your literature with the possibility of identification and representation. It is contributory and incalculable, because it produces speeches from the place of black Brazilians that expose discrimination.

The author also wrote stories, chronicles and poems in various local publications. To her poetry, reunited no volume Cantos à beira-mar (1871), expresses a strong sadness and dissatisfaction in the patriarchal and escravagista society.

Recently, as the centenary of the death of Maria Firmina dos Reis, for several reissues of her works. There will also be events and tributes to the author, acknowledging or her fundamental role in the Brazilian literary and social panorama.

Seu nome! é minha glória, é meu porvir,
Minha hope, and ambição é ele,
Meu sonho, meu love!
Seu does not tune me to the strings of minh'harpa,
Exalts minha mind, e a intoxicates
Of poetic odor.
Seu nome! embora wander this minha soul
In desert wastelands, - ou meditate
In anger solidão:
Seu nome é minha idéia - em vão tentara
Roubar-mo alguém do peito - em vão - I repeat,
Seu nome é meu condão.
When lowering beneficial to meu leito,
Esse anjo de deus, pale, and sad
Derradeiro friend.
Not your last ark, not extreme encouragement,
You must not pronounce my lips,
Seu not all inteiro!

Excerpt from the poem "Seu Nome", Cantos à beira-mar (1871)

Escute, abaixo, or poem "Seu Nome" by Maria Firmina dos Reis musicado pela singer Socorro Lira.

Leia na in full, in pdf: Úrsula, by Maria Firmina dos Reis.

2. Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914 - 1977)

Carolina Maria de Jesus was one of the best national writers and uma das primeiras black brazilian authors. Mãe solteira, potato taster and resident of the Canindé favela, in São Paulo, wrote about 20 newspapers recounting her conditions and life experiences.

Carolina de Jesus remains anonymous until 1960, year in which it was published Quarto de Despejo: Diary of a favelada. Or I free a framework of representation, as an author who writes about the social context in which she lives.

To life and equal um livro. Só depois de ter lido é that we know or that it contains. E nós when we are not living we know how to live our lives. A minha, I tied here, I was preta. Preta é a minha pele. Preto is the place where the Moorish is.

Quarto de Despejo (1960)

Conheça also Complete analysis of the Quarto de Despejo book.

Enquanto peripheral mulher, poor thing, that trabalhava and lutava for survival, I also wrote poems that we will denounce as social injustices and inequalities that she was subject.

Don't tell me that I was bounced,
that lived à margem gives life.
Tell me that he was trying to work,
but I was always ignored.
Say ao povo brasiliro
What a dream it was to be a writer
more eu não tinha dinheiro
to pay for a publisher.

Folha da Noite (1958)

Always building on her own experiences, she narrates racial and class discrimination, in the absence of opportunities. Her writings comment on the fosso that separates the citizens of the same country, depending on the cor da her fight and the local nasceram.

Adeus! Adeus, eu vou morrer!
And I leave these verses to my country
I know that we fear or will be reborn
I want a place, wave or preto is happy.

Excerpt from the poem "Muitas fugiam ao me ver"

I also read: Carolina Maria de Jesus: life and work

3. Conceição Evaristo (1946)

Conceição Evaristo is one of the best Afro-Brazilian national authors. Member of the Brazilian Academy of Letters, with his works of poetry, fiction and essay and notorious to valorization of black culture The analysis of the Brazilian social panorama.

Ponciá Vicêncio (2003), one of her most famous works by her, accompanies or life course of the protagonist, descending from escravos, from the rural area to the urban periphery.

This diaspora narrative provides reflections on the present and the past, leaving evident a herança of exclusion and marginalization. Militant of two social movements, Conceição Evaristo also prints on his poetry marks of racial discrimination, class and gender.

Vozes-mulheres

At the voice of minha bisavo
ecoou criança
us porões do ship.
ecoou regrets
of a lost childhood.
At the voice of minha avó
ecoou obedience
aos brancos-donos de tudo.
At the voice of minha mãe
ecoou baixinho revolta
I do not found das cozinhas alheias
debaixo das trouxas
roupagens sujas dos brancos
empoeirado caminho hair
rumo à favela.
A minha ainda voice
ecoa perplexed verses
com sangue rhymes
and
fome.
At the voice of minha filha
I collected all of our voices
pick me up yeah
the mute voices drawn
set with the throats.
At the voice of minha filha
pick me up yeah
a fala e o ato.
Or ontem - or leaf - or agora.
Na voice of minha filha
it will be ouvir to ressonância
or eco gives life-freedom.

Poems of Remembrance and Other Movements (2008)

Questioning the representation of black identities in national literature, she explains the preconceptions that we continue to be present in the culture and not the imagination of the Brazilian population.

Through the denunciation of inequalities, she calls attention to vulnerável situation of black women, simultaneously oppressed by racism and machismo da society.

Also, the literature of Conceição Evaristo is synonymous with representativeness, since through a black woman it reflects on her social condition and the inherent struggles that she carries.

Eu-Mulher

A drop of milk
I run between you signs.
Uma stain of sangue
He shaves me between the legs.
Meia palavra bitten
I foge gives mouth.
Vague desires hint at hope.
Eu-mulher em rios vermelhos
I inaugurate life.
Em low voice
violent to the eardrums of the world.
Antevejo.
Antecipo.
Before-alive
Before - agora - or what has to be done.
Eu fêmea-matrix.
Eu força-motriz.
Eu-mulher
coat gives mind
moto-continuous
the world.

Poems of remembrance and other movements

4. Djamila Ribeiro (1980)

Djamila Ribeiro is a Brazilian writer, academic, philosopher and activist. She became notorious for her contributions to social movements that fight direct hair from women and two black citizens.

Seu work of her cameçou for being disclosed na Internet, through the publication of texts on various platforms. Djamila, like other theorists, proposed that cybernetic space offers an alternative to media that reproduces the society's preconceptions.

I am not your first free of her, Or what is the place of fala? (2017), to author chama a atenção para o silencing to which some litters of the society are submissive. Defending need for multiple voices and stories na nossa culture, affirms the importance of challenging the male and white canon that prevails.

A work asks who can fail na nossa sociedade, quem te direito a voz, à existeência, ao speech in a form of power. At the same time as the vision of homem white and faced in a universal situation, diverse identities continue to be relegated to the place of "outro".

Minha struggles daily to be recognized as a little subject, important to the existence of a society that insists on denying it.

Djamila defends that each individual fails from a social place, from a location to structures of power that share experiences in common. Sublinha, also, to the importance of each one of us, starting from where you are, to think about what ways you can contribute to a more just society and free of preconception.

As a black woman, I don't want to be the object of study anymore, and I'm just a little subject.

I am not your second book What do you mean by black feminism? (2018), gathers texts that she published, between 2013 and 2017, not blog of CartaCapital magazine. In her writings, Djamila continues her reflections on the processes of silencing imposts on the female and black population, dialoguing with contemporary authors and commenting on current cases.

Attend, below, a lecture by the author at the TEDxSão Paulo conference, in 2016:

Confira também nossa analyze two Fundamental books by Djamila Ribeiro.

5. Mel Duarte (1988)

Mel Duarte is a Brazilian poet, winner of the international poetry championship Rio Poetry Slam (2016) e uma das organizers do Slam das Minas, in São Paulo.

A Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty (FLIP) of 2016 helped to project her work, when the videos of her poems were seen and shared by a vast public.

Not the same year, the author published her second book, Black Nua Crua. Her poetry is marked by uma strong social component, crossed by themes such as machismo and institutional racism.

In declarations to the press, Mel affirms that his objective was not to please the critic and to receive awards. Here is what moves the poet and the possibility of communicating with youth, pass empowerment mensagens, mainly for the public mais novo.

Preta:
Pretty woman, what are you going to fight for!
What is your own opinion and is not scared?
When a thousandth person apon for her hair and laughs saying that he is '' em pé ''
E to ignorance dessa intercourse does not allow to see ...
Em pé, armed,
Foda-se! What do you do!
Pra my and imposing!
Because black hair is not resistant,
É resistance.

Excerpt from the poem "Menina Melanina"

Escrevendo on issues such as feminine oppression, racial discrimination and rape culture, it faces poetic creation as a weapon to combat or preconception and ignorance.

Her poems promote self-esteem, resistance and black power, with words of inspiration and social transformation.

Vejo que nós, black meninas
We have olhos of stars,
That for times it is allowed to constellate
Or problem is that since forever they will throw us at nobility
Duvidaram das nossas ciências,
I used to take care of my hair, your highness
I leave, to survive, I have surplus or charge of the home
It is necessary to plant our roots
black mind of força matrix that springs up and laughs!
Mãos calejadas, bodies marked sim
More than that, ainda resists.

Don't give up black, don't give up!
Keep your faith where you couber
Spiritist, Buddhist Seja, do Candomblé.
I want you to move,
To magic that behind na tua dances,
Que vai lhe manter de pé.

Excerpt from the poem "Don't give up black, don't give up!"

Watch, down, or video I thought big that a poet fez in partnership with Fundação Telefônica:

6. Ryane Leão (1989)

Ryane Leão is a Brazilian poet, teacher and activist who became famous through the publication of her texts. Facebook I have not counted Instagram @ondejazzmeucoracao.

In 2017, she launched Tudo Nela Brilha e Queima, Livro onde brings together "poems of luta and love" as an autobiographical theory.

Currently, a digital influencer has more than 400 thousand followers who were inspired by her publications and helped to disseminate her work.

Addressing many experiences and situations, her verses from her lead to deep reflections on how we live and relate to each other.

what a stupid idea
achar que é melhor feel dor
not feel anything
we raise or feel wrong
that we prefer to atear fogo em us same
to coexist with us vazios.

Tudo Nela Brilha e Queima (2017)

Militant of black feminism, the author faces poetry as a way of communicating with other women. Recommend that you have faith in yourself, cultivate or own love e a self-oil, looking for Saudi environments where they are respected and able to evolve.

Mocha,
about places and people:
I know you can be the same
go embora

7. Paulina Chiziane (1955)

Paulina Chiziane is a Moçambican writer who became first woman to publish a romance not her country, com Ballad of Love ao Vento (1990).

Moçambique was two African countries colonized by Portugal, establishing their dominion for more than 400 years, in 1975. During the 1960s, the Frente de Libertação de Moçambique (FRELIMO), a party where Paulina was a militou, emerged.

His literary works focused on the social, political and cultural context of his country, which was in the civil war from 1977 to 1992.

During centuries, African women were barely represented through European discourses that perpetuated false images and negative stereotypes.

With writers like Paulina Chiziane, you are women viraram little subjects and not just objects of children liters. In her works, the author reflects on the position of feminine figures in the society and the submissions to which they are subject.

Thus we close our mouths and thus our souls. Do we have a word for it? And for more than a tivéssemos, that she is worth? Mulher's voice serves to pack the children into the evening. Palavra de mulher does not deserve credit. Not here, you young initiates learn to lição: trust a woman and sell your soul. Mulher has a compressed, serpentine tongue. Mulher deve ouvir, comply, obey.

Niketche (2002)

Em Niketche (2002), one of the most famous books, was revealed about polygamy, a common practice in the region.

Rami, a narrator-protagonist, tells the story of her life about her as a husband and her other women. I tend to family as a basic value, this way of living and facing the world seems to reduce feminine identities to mere wives and caregivers.

More, women. Invisíveis, more present. Sopro of silence that gives birth to the world. Stars shining no ceu, clouded by cursed nuvens. Souls frying in the shadow of the sky. Or sealed chest, hidden in this velho heart, leaf opened um little, to reveal the song das gerações. Mulheres de ontem, de hoje e de amanhã, singing to the same symphony, sem hope for changes.

Niketche (2002)

8. Noémia de Sousa (1926 - 2002)

Noémia de Sousa was a Mozambican poet, journalist, translator and militant, known as "two Mozambican poets". During the time that she lived in Portugal, she positioned herself against Salazar's regulatory regime and ended up having to leave the country.

She collaborated, as a journalist and poet, with various journals and magazines. In 2001, the Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos launched an anthology Black Sangue which brings together the poetry that she wrote between 1949 and 1951.

Seus verses of her espelham a revolta, o cansaço e os protests of a colonized povo. Her words demonstrate a strong social conscience, denouncing racism and discrimination that she experienced.

Lição
Ensinaram-lhe na missão,
When I was petite:
“We are all filhos de Deus; each Homem
he and irmão doutro Homem! "
Disseram-lhe isto na missão,
when he was petite.
Naturally,
ele não ficou semper menino:
she grows, learn to count and read
and she began to know
melhor essa mulher sold
What is life
of all you unhappy.
And so, once, innocently,
he olhou for um Homem e disse "Irmão ..."
Mas o Homem pale fulminou-o harshly
com seus olhos cheios de ódio
e replies: "Black."

Black Sangue (2001)

Fica semper patent or seu desire of freedom e to hope in melhores days that bring about an iminent social transformation.

Another fundamental characteristic of his work is how he reflects it. values ​​and traditions of Moçambique, promoting the valorization of own culture. The author became a huge inspiration for various African and Afro-descendant artists.

Tirem-tudo us,
more deixem-nos to music!
Tirem-us to terra em that we are born,
where we grow
and where we discovered the first time
what or world is assim:
um labirinto de xadrez ...
Pull us to the light of the sun that afflicts us,
to your lyrical xingombela
nas noites mulatas
da Moçambican jungle
(essa lua que semeou no coração
to poetry that we find in life)
tirem-nos a palhota ̶ humilde cubata
where we live and love,
tirem-us a machamba that gives us or pão,
tirem-nos or heat of lume
(What are you doing)
̶ but not to throw us to music!

Watch the reading of the poem "Supplication" by Emicida:

9. Alice Walker (1944)

Alice Walker is a North American writer and poet who has devoted herself extensively to sporting hairs directly. During youth, due to racial segregation, she frequentou or Butler Baker High School, A college only for some black people.

The logo she became involved with the military, not moving two civilians, and ended up being persecuted by groups of white supremacy, such as the Ku Klux Klan.

We are not white. We are not European. We are pretos that nem os Africans. In us Africans we will be working together for a common goal: a wonderful life for blacks in the whole world.

A Purple Cor (1983)

In 1983, she launched her most famous work, A Cor Purple, um epistolary romance, composed by letters that the protagonist, Celie, wrote for Deus and for her signature.

Nessa correspondence, never to be sent, the narrator-protagonist tells the dramatic events of her life. I have suffered sexual abuse of my own father since childhood, a woman has two filhos with him and ended up being forced to marry with a white homem who is also violent.

Minha fights and is dark. My nose is just a nose. Meu labio is only a labio. Meu corpo é só um corpo de mulher passing through the mudança da idade. Nothing special here for someone to love. No curled-up hair, no bonitinho. Nada novo ou jovem. But my heart must be new and young because it seems that the flowers come to life.

A Purple Cor (1983)

A narrative was passed during the 30s, not in the country, marked territory hair extreme racism and segregation practices. This atmosphere of oppression ecoa for everything or free, motivating reflections on the feminine condition and the negritude.

The work uses a linguistic register next to orality, with regionalisms and grammar errors, trying to represent or jeito as those falariam mulheres.

O Romance was adapted for a cinema in 1985, directed by Steven Spielberg. Veja or trailer here:

10. Maya Angelou (1928 - 2014)

Marguerite Ann Johnson, the most well-known literary pseudonym Maya Angelou, was a notorious North American writer, poet, and activist. Endowed with many talents, she was also a roteirist, film director, actress, teacher, journalist, historian, singer and dancer.

Her literary work is quite vast, including several books of poetry, essays, theater pieces, films and seven autobiographies. Among them stands out Eu sei because o passaro sing na gaiola (1969), in which the author was revealed about the times of her childhood and adolescence.

When I was a child, Maya Angelou was sexually abused with her love for me and related to family years. Either a criminal ended up being assassinated and a woman was traumatized, or it led to a silence that lasted for years.

Or contact with literature and poetry foi or her way of salvation. Through her writings, she reflected on social issues such as identity, racism and machismo.

Phenomenal Mulher

Pretty women inquire where it is or meu segredo
Não sou bela nem meu corpo é de model
But when I start to tell them
Take me for false or what I reveal

I say,
It is not reach two arms,
Na length two quadris
I don't pace two steps
Na curve two lips
Eu sou mulher
Of um jeito phenomenal
Phenomenal Mulher:
Assim sou eu

When an enclosure inside,
Quiet and safe
E um homem found,
They can get up
Ou lose your composure
E pairam ao meu redor,
As abelhas de candura

I say,
É o fogo nos meus olhos
You bright teeth,
Or gingado gives waist
You vibrant passes
Eu sou mulher
Of um jeito phenomenal
Phenomenal Mulher:
Assim sou eu

Same as homens wonder
Or that you see em mim,
Levam tão a serio,
But I don't know how to unveil
Qual é o meu mistério
When I told him,
Ainda assim não enxergam

É o arco das coasts,
Or sun I do not smile,
Or balance two signals
E a graça no style
Eu sou mulher
Of um jeito phenomenal
Phenomenal mulher
Assim sou eu

Agora você barnacle
Because I don't bend
I don't scream, I don't get excited
Nem sou from falar alto
When you will visit me,
Pride-se o seu olhar

I say,
É a batida do meu jump
O balanço do meu cabelo
To palma da minha mão,
A need for my wakefulness,
Because eu sou mulher
Of um jeito phenomenal
Phenomenal Mulher:
Assim sou eu.

Excerpt from the poem "Mulher Fenomenal"

Maya Angelou was one of the first African-American authors to write about her experiences. It became a great inspiration for various readers' generations, with messages of self-esteem, inclusiveness and respect for close hair.

Promoting understanding and love as ways to combat ignorance and middle, Maya Angelou é um power icon and black resistance.

Deixando for after noites of terror and atrocidade
Eu i get up
In direction to a new day of intense clarity
Eu i get up
Tracing with me or dom of meus antepasados,
Eu carrego o sonho e a Esperanza do homem escravizado.
E assim, eu I get up
Eu i get up
Eu I get up.

Excerpt from the poem "Ainda assim eu me stand up"

Confira, below, to the reading of Ainda assim eu I get up for Brazilian artists Mel Duarte, Drik Barbosa and Indira Nascimento:

11. bell hooks (1952)

Gloria Jean Watkins, a better known pseudonym bell hooks, is a North American feminist writer, theorist and activist. During youth, she frequented schools only for blacks, because of the measures of racial segregation that prevailed.

Since then she was confronted with the realities of a racist and patriarchal society, to which she tries to respond as her literary and academic work.

The author published more than thirty works between cultural studies, theory, infantile histories, memories and poems. His reflections on her are present in three determining factors: gender, race and class.

Infinite times, you make efforts of black women to fail, break or silence and deceive yourself in progressive political debates that are facing opposition. There is between the imposition of silence that we experience and anti-intellectual censorship in predominantly black contexts that It should be a place of support (like a space where there are only black women), and that imposition of silence that occurs in institutions where It is said that black and white women cannot be fully protected or protected because their work is not sufficiently theoretical.

Em Não serei eu mulher? (1981), some of her most famous works by her, and also the theorizations that she produced, reflect on you social movements and construction of black feminism us United States.

Embora do not use this thermos (which was created by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989), here I propose a intersectional perspective das opressões, ou seja, to the understanding that this discrimination potentially intersects with each other.

Since the beginning of my involvement as a movement of women, bothered by the insistence of liberationist brancas women to burn race and sex were two separate quests. A minha experience of life showed me that two questões are inseparáveis, that no moment of my birth, two fathers will determine my destiny, I am born black and I am born a woman.

A truly visionary, bell hooks reveal little concepts that are only now beginning to be understood and understood by the general public. Até hoje, she continues to be one of the theoretical principals of the movement of women and of black feminism and marking presença nas discussions on Afro-descendant culture.

12. Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie (1977)

Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie is a Nigerian writer and activist who has achieved an immense international success and conquered new readers for contemporary African literature. The author published a work of poetry and another theater more aquilo than he made famous for his prose. In 2003, she launched Hibiscus Roxo, or her first romance, passed in post-colonial Nigeria.

Chimamanda has also been an important speaker and speaker on feminism and direitos das mulheres. Falando com mulheres e homens and asking that Let's All Feminists (2014), thus problematizes causes and consequences of a patriarchal society.

She is a woman with power, because it is necessary to disguise that she has power? Sadly, it is true that our world is filled with homens and women than not among powerful women. We are conditioned to think that we cannot as masculine that a powerful woman is considered an aberration.

In the years of 2009 and 2012, Chimamanda participated in famous Ted Talks as the speeches "O perigo das unique histories" and "Let's all be feminists." O second I ended up being transformed into a book, published in 2014, and inspiring a singer pop Beyoncé who used some of her most famous phrases in music Flawless (2013).

We teach men to cling, to shrink, saying: “You can be ambitious, but not muita. Deve clam or success, but not very. Senão você ameaça or homem. You are the provider of the family, pretend that I am not, especially in public. Senão você will be emasculating or homem ".

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