Vozes-mulheres entre lâminas e cetins: diálogo entre as poéticas de Conceição Evaristo e Dionne Brand

Abstract

This work proposes a comparative reading of Afro-Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo’s and African-Canadian Dionne Brand’s poetry in order to investigate how the African Diaspora and the “new diaspora” are grasped and expressed in their poetic works. We started this investigation by defining a nuanced concept of “diaspora” that was better fitted to the way it appears in both authors’ poetry, taking into account the different historical and cultural contexts that underlie the reflection and the aesthetic production of the authors in question. Thus, this study analyzes, in the poetry of both selected authors, how the diaspora raises, for the diasporic subject, a movement of spatial displacement and also a process of selfknowledge in which different power axes are articulated, guiding their reflection and their look over the diasporic society from which they proceed, having as core concepts those of displacement and location, migration and colonization. These aspects enable a broader understanding of the history of blacks in the diaspora and in contemporary, global, urban settings. This work also emphasizes the massive presence of women in the "new diaspora" and examines issues of race and gender that involve the participation of women in the diasporic movement, highlighting the role of women intellectuals and poets that interfere in the understanding of contemporary society, such as Conceição Evaristo and Dionne Brand. The theoretical references in this study include assumptions of Cultural Studies, Feminist Criticism, Literary Criticism, History, and Anthropology