This session will focus on the interrelations between Afro-diasporic religious traditions and Afro-Brazilian literature. From a transdisciplinary perspective, papers elaborate fresh approaches to Black literature through analytical examinations of religious tropes in literary works. Presenters specifically address the religious implications embedded in select contemporary fiction and poetry vis-à-vis critical analyses of renditions of African heritage.

The diasporic survival of African religion in Lusophone literature speaks to Black people’s capacity to disrupt social injustices and transform their existence as victims of the transatlantic slave trade. For Achille Mbembe (2017, 173), the descendants of enslaved Africans employed religion and art as “the final defense against the forces of dehumanization and death.” Religion and art are seen as a “twofold creation” that “has always served as a metaphysical and aesthetic envelope.” Clearly, in their diasporic life, enslaved Africans birthed new modes of thinking, being, and believing, which are manifest in Black cultural, artistic, and religious traditions. As Jacob Olupona and Terry Rey (2008, 4) argue, Yoruba-derived religions such as Afro-Brazilian Candomblé “have inspired poets, novelists, painters, sculptors, musicians, and dancers to creative genius.” However, as Leda Martins explains (1997, 26), Afro-Brazilian identity should be understood as a crossroads of African oral traditions and memories and it “can be thought of as texture and text.”

Of considerable importance to the comprehension of Black literature is Eshu, the Yoruba deity of the crossroads. Defining Eshu as “the indigenous Black metaphor for the literary critic,” Henry Louis Gates, Jr. (1989, 9) places the critics of Black literary texts at the intersection of “discursive crossroads” (ibid, 65). Concentrating on Eshu as the one who establishes narration itself, Martins (1997, 28) describes the crossroads as “a principle of rhetorical and metaphysical construction.” Niyi Afolabi (2022, 8) informs us that Afro-Brazilian texts “use memory to relocate the sacred” recuperated from diasporic experience. Inspired by Black Brazilian women, Sarah Ohmer (2013, 43) coins the term “Axé-ocracy” to signify “a political poetics,” that is, “the spirituality-based strategies that combat political shifts and act against continued inequity and discrimination.” In this social-political agenda, Eshu’s symbolic narratives render African knowledge relevant to a unique literary tone that intersects a sense of identity and an urge to transform the harsh realities of Black lives.

The call for explorations of African religion in Lusophone Black literature elicited responses that underscore the impact of religious cultures on the vitality of the Afro-Brazilian literary imagination. In appraising the crucial dimensions of this cultural impact, the session will cover broad topics concerning Afro-Brazilian literature, such as politics, epistemology, decolonization, and intertextuality.

To guarantee a fifteen-minute discussion period, twelve minutes will be allocated to each of the following presenters.

Fernando Rocha demonstrates how Eshu is central to the understanding of Márcio Barbosa’s novella Paixões Crioulas. Providing Black people with the symbolism for another form of politics, Eshu’s presence and his invocation (Laroiê) signify communal politics that rests on a movement towards the origins, as Muniz Sodré theorizes in his Pensar nagô. Rocha presents an Eshusian connection with vital forces that, while allowing for a rebellious transgression of limitations, create all sorts of paths to be taken.

Nilzimar Vieira detects literacy and Candomblé’s epistemology in Eliana Alves Cruz’s novel O crime do Cais do Valongo. The critic offers insight into Afro-Brazilian subjectivity via the protagonist Muana Lòmuè, a literate enslaved Black woman who narrates her struggle for emancipation. Utilizing a theoretical framework from feminist and historical angles, Vieira’s literary critique of African religiosity indicates Black women’s resistance and leadership as a decolonial strategy against a system of oppression that still affects Afro-Brazilians.

In her analysis of the fantasy As lendas de Dandara by Jarid Arraes, Maggie Felisberto centers the employment of Yoruba mythology in recounting the history of Quilombo dos Palmares. The emphasis is on Dandara as a legendary hero, which Felisberto attributes to how Arraes structures the novel around ancient mythology, characterizing the orishas as decolonizing agents and symbols of hope. This heroism, as she explains, is marketed to educate juvenile readers about the tragic effects of slavery.

Ayodeji Olugbuyiro closes the session by exploring Afro-Brazilian poetic renditions of Eshu, using the framework of oriki, a Yoruba genre of praise poetry. Drawing on scholarship regarding Yoruba literature, he argues that Afro-Brazilian sacred poetry is derived from elements of the oriki genre, which should be considered in the interpretation of this body of work. The analysis places the oriki as an intertext of Afro-Brazilian literature and a framework for the study of Afro-diasporic poetics.