I hope this essay adds to the choir of voices that have long been silenced-voices from bodies subjugated and made invisible by the forces of racism, still present in the Brazil that many, especially racists, call a racial democracy. 2 The authors I introduce throughout the course of this essay will be unfamiliar to most Brazilian readers and even to most researchers, who for the most part overvalue canonical texts-to the detriment of those written by the marginal or marginalized. Color, gender, and social class determine what gets taught, and the largely white faculty in educational institutions tends to research and teach literature produced by writers who share their profile of white men who belong to a certain economic and intellectual elite.

More than fifty percent of Brazil’s population is Black, 1 but literary education in Brazil is white and whitewashed. Resistance and protest were key to establishing an identity that was reflected in the new forms and literary content produced by Black writers seeking to upend the status quo. This movement, starting in the seventies, challenged not only race discrimination and economic marginalization but the literary tropes and expectations of the academy, and is a continuation of the various forms of resistance among Black Brazilians since the sixteenth century. My choice to write in first person is a reflection of my position as a black intellectual, researcher, and social activist in the Movimento Negro. As a scholar who is deeply connected not only to my research but to the writers who produce the works, I feel I have an ethical and political commitment to make their voices heard and establish their presence as critical to the history of Brazilian literature.

In my take on Afro-Brazilian literature in Brazil, I chose to consider first the works that had the most cultural impact, and which best represented the experiences that were specific to Black writers.

Brazilian voices reader