This session analyzes contemporary Afro-diasporic writing by Afro-Brazilian women across genres and generations, foregrounding how memory, affect, pedagogy, and futurity reconfigure history and identity. The topic will be treated as an interdisciplinary exploration that moves between literary analysis, cultural studies, and pedagogy. Each presentation will illuminate how writers translate collective memory and lived experience into narrative and lyric practices that resist erasure, reframe freedom, and imagine alternative futures. The discussion will proceed through close readings of representative texts (children’s literature, poetry, and fiction) and will connect these readings to broader theories of race, gender, pedagogy, and diaspora.
Rationale for a Session on This Topic
Afro-Brazilian women writers inhabit a crucial nexus of race, gender, memory, and nation. Their work revises canonical narratives, challenges entrenched hierarchies within Brazilian literature and education, and participates in transatlantic conversations about slavery, resistance, and Black diaspora. By organizing a focused session, we can (a) foreground women’s contributions that have historically been marginalized, (b) examine how pedagogy, affect, and futurity intersect in current writing, and (c) illuminate the ways in which memory and imagination function as political acts. As scholarship on Quilombismo, Afro-diasporic aesthetics, and Afro-futurism evolves, this session positions Afro-Brazilian women’s voices at the center of ongoing debates about decolonization, canon formation, and the politics of representation.
Relation to Existing Scholarship
The topic engages foundational and emerging scholarship in Afro-Brazilian studies. The session draws on Beatriz Nascimento’s quilombismo and its deployment in contemporary prose and poetry to rethink resistance and historical agency ("Decentering Palmares"). It intersects with African American studies on black feminist affect, particularly Bettina Judd’s feelin, to analyze how “banzu” and diaspora melancholy shape lyric strategies and collective memory. It also engages debates around Afro-futurism by examining Lu Ain-Zaila’s Brazilian Afrofuturism, highlighting how Brazilian contexts uniquely blend African traditions with speculative futures. By juxtaposing children’s literature with adult lyric and narrative forms, the session contributes to a multi-siting of Afro-diasporic cultural production.
Session Structure and Time Management
The session will run for the allotted time with a clearly delineated sequence that preserves at least 15 minutes for unstructured discussion. A proposed structure:
- 0:00–0:10: Introduction and framing of the topic, including key concepts (memory, emancipation).
- 0:10–1:05: Individual presentations (or concise talking points for a roundtable). Each presenter or discussant will have ~10-13 minutes.
- 1:05–1:30: Open floor for audience questions and commentary, ensuring a minimum of 15 minutes of unstructured discussion.
ir Relation to the Topic
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Rhonda Collier (Narratives of Freedom: Afro-Brazilian Children’s Literature as Transformative Reading) Analyzes The Journeys of Violet by Alexandra Lima da Silva to position Afro-Brazilian children’s literature as a site of critical literacy and emancipatory pedagogy. Relates to the topic by showing how education, mobility, and self-authorship in youth literature cultivate critical consciousness and reimagine freedom within Afro-diasporic contexts.
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John T Maddox IV (Feelin Banzu in the poetry of Conceição Evaristo and Mel Adún) Examines racialized and gendered melancholy through the concept of banzu in contemporary poetry, drawing on Bettina Judd’s framework of “feelin.” Connects historical memory of enslavement to present-day expressions of pain, resilience, and community formation in Afro-Brazilian women’s lyric production.
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Lesley Feracho (Decentering Palmares: Quilombismo and Black Brazilian Women’s Narratives of Resistance) Uses Beatriz Nascimento’s quilombismo to foreground Black women as historical agents in Palmares, focusing on Dandara in Jarid Arraes’s fiction and the poetry of Esmeralda Ribeiro and Alzira Rufino. Discusses how these writers expand liberation narratives beyond masculinist paradigms and locate transatlantic dialogues of resistance.
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Emanuelle K.F. Oliveira-Monte (Existing While Black in the Future: Ain-Zaila’s Brazilian Afrofuturism) Investigates Lu Ain-Zaila’s work to articulate an Afro-Brazilian Afrofuturism centered on African traditions, Black history, and Brazil’s unique sociocultural landscape. Explores how speculative fiction and short stories imagine futures rooted in collective memory and ongoing struggle.
Diversity of Voices
The panelists represent multiple states (Alabama, Georgia, Tennessee), diverse scholarly frameworks (pedagogy, affect theory, decolonial studies, and Afrofuturism), and a spectrum of textual forms (children’s literature, poetry, and prose). Two speakers are Black and two are white. One is Trinidadian, another is Brazilian, and two are US American. Three of their universities are public and one is private. This configuration invites a range of vantage points on Afro-Brazilian women’s literature.