Setting Boundaries in Order to Say I

Black Women's Self-Image in the Poetics of Lubi Prates and Noémia de Sousa

Abstract

Inspired by the emergence of new places of Black womanhood’s enunciation in modern and contemporary literatures, especially in the zones of cultural exchange that form the Black Atlantic, as elaborated by Paul Gilroy (2001), this paper creates a comparative reading between the works of two authors: Brazilian poet Lubi Prates and Mozambican poet Noémia de Sousa. In Noémia de Sousa’s poetry, we identify a dialogue with the Negritude movement and Pan-Africanist debates, and notice these themes function as an invitation to resistance. In Lubi Prates’ work, we observe melancholy and an exilic consciousness arising from the attempt to organize the fragmented memories of diasporic experience. Nevertheless, these poets share an effort to construct a self-image that refuses subordination to the negative stereotypes historically associated to Black womanhood. Finally, we relate their disruptive poetic gestures to the thought of the Cameroonian philosopher Achille Mbembe in Critique of Black Reason (2018), as well as to Aimé Césaire’s Discourse on Negritude (1987).