Raquel Almeida, of Coletivo Cultural Esperança Garcia, wrote an article titled 'The Red Lipstick of Empowerment', about the reality that is, whilst black power movements have empowered certain numbers of black women in Brazil, overwhelmingly, the majority of black women remained oppressed. How can liberation movements be truly meaningful to those they set out to help? Raquel identifies her own privilege in having had the opportunity to be educated, and speaks about the interesting cultural moment of Brazil in 2015 saying that yes, now the day of the Black Woman is celebrated, and women wear dreads proudly; but to what extent is the use of symbols of liberation and oppression truly representative of emancipation? She asks what use does wearing dreads have in relation to the poor black cleaner who hasn't had access to the privilege of accessing liberation?

I translated an excerpt of the article, as I believe that Raquel's insight is really interesting and frank- she challenges herself to never become complacent and egotistical with her position.

....This last 25th of July was illuminated with many actions all over the city about the theme of the black woman. Marches, debates, lectures, etc., so many events who the producers and organisers are also the protagonists. I remembered that in 2009 many people would take the piss, look at me like I was crazy when they heard of the day of the Caribbean and Latin American Black woman.

Over the month, in various forms, the word 'empowerment' could be heard around constantly, which had me seriously thinking about how a debate, a spoken word event, an exhibition or a march really empowered black women in the peripheries; the house-wives, cleaners, cooks, single women and various others... The 25th of July, for these women, was just another day. Wherever I went, where I'd be, I would hardly see them... but when I'd be on my way home, I would see them on my street. So, I kept asking myself about black empowerment..

What's the use of talking about Zumbi to the Palmares? (Zumbi is a revolutionary figure in Afro-Brazilian history, the Palmares, the community of slaves he led an uprising for. This comment basically ridicules the tendency of speaking about academic/ historical reference point to those who don't have the point of reference) To talk to women who already are in the know about racism, genocide, laws, aesthetics, and empowerment? In doing so, am I feeding my ego, I, a black woman who has had and has access to many effects/ realities of the 'Fight', to the persistence of the peripheral black women who have opened up the way before me?

Passing the red lipstick to speak in public and to appear in it, for me, is not empowerment. After all, we live and contribute to a place of conflict, that's a fact. And this isn't empowerment, it is to feed vanity. Black women's pride passes through many different issues, and one of them is aesthetic or cosmetic.

We talk a lot about self-esteem, the valorisation of our hair, but how much of this is used against ourselves, in this wave of repression and isolation which we live? And what of the real black women of the peripheries who continue to deal with the everyday, dying of illnesses that burst the deceptions of life, bursting in the form of cancer, aneurysms, schizophrenia, myoma, etc. etc. etc., this is whilst we are not dying like Claudia, drugged by the Police, by the hand of a violent man, by the use of drugs, and all the other forms of extermination which were created under measure for us black women.

Link to the article: http://esperanca-garcia.blogspot.co.uk/2015/08/o-batom-vermelho-e-o-empoderamento.html

These questions are for Elizandra Souza, the coorganiser of the anthology, Prextos de Mulheres Negras.

1. Você pode me falar sobre o grupo Mjiba?

1. Can you tell me about your group, Mjiba?

2. Como você veja seu envolvimento com saraus do São Paulo in relacionamento com a sua poesia?

2.How do you see your involvement with saraus in Sao Paulo in relation to your poetry?

3. Como e que você interprete as mudanças e crescimento nos últimos anos na literatura da periferia aqui em São Paulo?

3.How do you interpret the changes and growth in the the last few years in the peripheral literature scene here in Sao Paulo?

4. In relação à emergência da literatura das mulheres negras, o que você acha que se juntaram as varias mulheres que já estavam envolvidas com trabalhos em artes, cultura, e a criar novos espaços de expressão e arte?

In relation to the emergence of black women's literature, what do you think has joined together women who were already seperately involved in art and culture, in creating new spaces of expression and art?

5. Essas mudanças, em sua opinião, fortaleçam a mulher negra nesses espaços?

Have these changes strengthened the position of black women in cultural spaces?

6. Tem um momento essencial em essa mudança por você?

Has there been a pivotal moment in these changes, in your opinion?

7. Num jeito muito diferente que no mundo de publicação de livro burguesia, os saraus da periférica se mostram uma comunidade de poetas e conhecidos, o que você pensa disso?

Differently to the bourgeious publishing world, saraus in the peripheries demonstrate a strong community of poets and friends, what do you think of this?

8. Qual foram as suas inspirações a co-criar os Pretextos?

What was your inspiration in co-creating Pretextos?

9. Qual e a tema que junta as poesias e poetas nos Pretextos?

Which theme would you say runs through the anthology?

10. Os pretextos juntam mais de 20 poetas, algumas que foram publicadas pela primeira vez. Voce acha que e importante ampliar as vozes de varias mulheres negras?

The anthology brings together more than twenty poets, some who were published for the first time. Do you think it's important to present various perspectives, or amplify the voices of many black women?

11. Você acha que falta espaço para mulher negra na cultura?

Do you think space is lacking in culture for Black women? (Referring to Brazil implicitly in this question)

12. Você dedica o seu livro, Águas da cabaça para as Capulanas de Arte Negra, você poderia falar um pouco sobre isso?

You dedicate your book, Aguas da cabaca, to the Capulans de Arte Negra- could you speak about this?

13. A cultura nordestina e importante para você? Você veja isso como inspiração na sua poesia?

Is northeastern culture (predominantly Afro-Brazilian) important for you? (many of her poems reference Northeastern culture, particularly Candomble religion, and Elizandra also spent many years living in the state of Bahia)

14. As semanas passadas em Sao Paulo tiveram o serie de eventos ‘Estéticas de periferia’, que celebrou a cultura periférica de São Paulo, qual foi o envolvimento dos grupos de mulheres que já falaram um pouco nestes eventos?

In the last weeks in Sao Paulo there has been a series of events called 'Aesthetics of the Peripheries', which celebrated peripheral culture in Sao Paulo. During this, what was the involvement of the groups of black women discussed earlier?

EIizandra Souza, one of the founders of the Mjiba group of black feminist poets in São Paulo, recently organized and co-wrote the anthology 'Pretextos de Mulheres Negras' (2013) or 'Pretexts of Black women', (A pun on the Portuguese word for Black 'Preta', and 'Texts' - 'Black-texts') which is a collection of poems and short biographies of 20 Paulistana poets 2 Afro-Latina poets. After meeting with Quilombhoje member Miriam Alves with the intention of finding out about the historic work of the group, she ended up pointing me in the direction of the current spoken word (sarau) scene which developed out of the black-consciousness movement in the 80s and 90s, and which has now spread across Brazil and begun to gain some funding and national media attention. Within the clusters of different community based saraus, poets such as Elizandra and Raquel Almeida (founder of Sarau Elo da Corrente), and Debora Garcia saw the need to create specific spaces for what they felt was the underrepresntation of black female poets and artists within an already marginalised group. Importantly, these groups of women emphasise the importance of community based action and workshops, saying that there is still much work to be done to create an environment where underpriviliged black women can even begin to gain access to art.

I met with Elizandra at Ação Educativa, which is a NGO that runs educational programmes for disadvantaged or peripheral young people in São Paulo. She works there as editor of Agenda da Periferia, a comprehensive listings of most cultural events happening in the periferia, from theatre to samba and capoeira. Elizandra explained how these incentives and NGOs are relatively new, and that it is only recently that the federal and municipal governments have invested money into co-funding projects.

Before our chat she invited me to watch a play in the centres auditorium, in which some teenage male actors were perfoming a piece about experiences in juvenile prison. We sat through the performance, and I was surprised to hear many audience members crying though the play which was relatively conceptual and didn't involve much dialogue - I thought perhaps I was missing a crucial point. During the Q+A it became apparent that the actors had actually devised the play based on their own (current...) experience in the local juvenile prison, and had been released for one day to perform it... I was taken aback, the boys spoke about how this experience of being in a play had, for some of them, been the first time they had felt 'good at something'. The chattiest of them thanked the audience for looking at them 'in the eye, like we're not monsters', and recognised that it would take more than just taking up acting to pull them out of a cycle of violent gun crime and hard drugs, but that finding something that they felt passionate about had changed their perspective on what they were capable of doing. Initiatives like this programme lead by Acao Educativa are effective because they make the inaccessible, far-fetched world of art and theatre relatable to young people who have a lived experience so disparate from erudite language. Whilst this can be viewed similarly in the UK in underpriviliged communities, and to some extent general youth culture, from what I've noticed in SãoPaulo, there seems to be a need for a reworking of an education system which is failing vulnerable young people; in this instance one size doesn't fit all. In this way, these community lead iniatives have been so important because they allow young people to explore their creativity and critical thinking where they otherwise would never have had the opportunity to do so in terrible schools, amidst violent gun crime.

During the meeting we initially spoke about how her collective Mjiba emerged out of the lack of spaces for women within the periferia scene; she felt that they were being invited to speak on cultural platforms or panels, but there would always be just one of them, expected to represent both black and female 'categories'. This tokenism was frustrating, particularly as only the relatively famous Raquel Almeida, Debora Garcia, and Elizandra would be called to speak (crucially they were one of the few female writers who had books published). Elizandra mentioned that when access is so limited to black women, out of those who do end up coming to saraus to perform, it is still unlikely that they would have the time or money to publish their own book and circulate it. This reflects the unique nature of the sarau circuit which is a similar in a sense to underground music scenes, like hip-hop or electronica, where artists gain success through circulating mixtapes and uploading their music to soundcloud or Youtube. Literatura Periferica is generally self-published, which of course is difficult financially for relatively poor writers, and this financial constraint explains why most writing from the periferias has been printed in anthology form.

Elizandra’s own creative output was broken up by the realities of being a young, peripheral black woman in São Paulo; she had to study for five years in 'cursinho' (a private college where students study for university entrance exams) in order to get into university, and then later on at university she had to work during the days to sustain herself. As she commented, the prestigious public universities are, ironically, filled with middle-class students from private schools, whilst everyone else is left to attend dubious expensive universities where the teaching standard is comparably poor. Elizandra’s early life is really interesting- she grew up as a hip hop fanatic, published her own zine as a teenager, whilst also writing her own poetry and short stories.

In relation to her success professionally Elizandra emphasises that she is an exception to the rule, and her experience is in no way refective of the majority of black women growing up in Zona Norte of São Paulo. She told me about having often received incredulous responses from aquaintances when telling where she studied, and what she does now. A former boss at a part-time job would often make blatantly offensive remarks about her entrance to PUC, one of the best private universities in Brazil, saying that it was only down to the quotas (the government introduced substantial quotas for Afrodescendent students, to general outrage) that black students were getting in to universities. Another aquaintance, when told by Elizandra she worked as a journalist and editor, feigned that she was joking, as 'how could you be a real journalist with that hair' (in reference to the braided hairstyle Elizandra wears). Nevertheless, what was emphasised during the meeting was that, whilst it had been extremely frustrating to have been subjected to microaggressions growing up and to have had to pay dearly in order to get to an academic standard on par with students from private schools, she is priviliged in her current position - she has health insurance, a job she is passionate about, and a strong artsistic community supporting her.

Mjiba, the group she founded in 2004, initially operated as a space where black female writers could meet up and have a designated creative platform for themselves. Soon after, she released her first book with the help of Allan da Rosa, a prominent peripheral writer. The group relaunched in 2010 after she finished studying, and began to hold meetings, saraus and took part in many new cultural initiatives being launched in the city at the time. Elizandra and Jennyffer Nascimento, respectively, from the group published books in 2012 and 2014. Pretextos was launched as an project to platform the lived experience of black female poets, many of whom had been writing and performing for many years, but who had never been published. Each poet had been interviewed by Elizandra in order to compile page-long 'about me' sections, in which they were asked to talk about their 'Africanidade', which women inspired them, and what their poetry meant to them. Each response was varied and different, which was of course what the project set out to do, to demonstrate multiplicity in experience, to deconstruct the notion of the black woman as a singular, tangible 'thing'.

However whilst these incentives are exciting and inspiring, she kept coming back to the point that it's important to understand the reality of the situation for black women in contemporary Brazilian society - affected by machismo and racism, they are statistically more likely to be literally murdered (60% of women killed by police are black for example), and alarming prejudices still persist, such as the fallacy that black women are somehow 'tougher', so often are not given the same amount of anaesthetic, which is really appalling.

I met with Raquel Almeida shortly before she presented her poetry at an weekly event called Poetry Dreads, where poets perform alongside hair workshops and women selling artisinal products. She spoke about Coletivo Cultural Esperanca Garcia, which she had originally founded as a group of research and learning, but which inadvertently developed into a group that would go into local health centres in the periferias, and deliver training in courses like makeup and domestic training. They also began running workshops where the women could learn about ways to manage afro hair, turban making workshops, sexual health and awareness about domestic violence and support networks available. Essentially, the group began engaging with peripheral women and creating a safe discussion and meeting space to provide support for the community. I thought it was really interesting that Raquel mentioned how the group didn’t start with a direct intention of branching into community work - this really demonstrated the unique quality of Sao Paulo's peripheral artistic groups - these writers and poets are inextricably tied into a strong network of friends and communities, so the natural progression from poet-research group to community work makes sense in this context.

Raquel said that it was only recently that efforts such as Coletivo Cultural Esperança Garcia have been taken seriously by the wider artistic community - at first she said people just didn't see the point, particularly within what she described as the quite misogynistic, or macho culture within periferia movement itself. However in the last three years or so, the black-feminist movement has really taken off, and countless saraus, collectives, and incentives have sprung up. Jessica Balbino, a journalist, has based her masters thesis on the movimento negra periferica, which has taken the form of Margens, an online magazine which showcases the work of Afro-Brazilian women artists and poets. I went to see the final piece of Balbino's work, which was an event put on at Sesc Campinas (a state funded arts centre in Campinas) which was part of a series of events celebrating women's poetry in Brazil. Raquel explained that this event was really important in the context of the progression of their movement - from performing in Sarau Elo da Corrente, in one of the most distant and poor area of the city, to having an event put on in another city celebrating their collective work, in a series of events that was platforming national poets, was something unthinkable in the days Miriam Alves had begun writing, for example.

Before leaving the UK, I had read a lot about contemporary Afro-Brazilian literature in a bilingual book called 'The Afro Brazilian Mind/ A mente afro-brasileira'- edited by Nafolabi, Marcio Barbosa, and Esmerelda Ribeiro. From this book, I started to gain an understanding of how and why Afro-Brazilian literature emerged in the late 20th century intertwined with radical or peripheral movements, as is probably better known as happening in the US in the civil rights movement slightly earlier. The issue that Afro-Brazilians faced was liminality, which has a few effects- one that, from the outset, due to the inadvertent structural racism that becomes quite clear once one looks into the history of Brazil, Afro-Brazilians are unable access to quality education, so that the privileged literary world is often out of reach or is unrelatable. 'Liminality' is also demonstrable in the way that afro-Brazilian writers were not able to be published due to a lack of interest in their work, and what Marcio Barbosa suggests in his article about the Quilombhoje- academics who would boast of being 'interested' in afro-Brazilian’s but in reality weren't comfortable to be published on the same platform. Essentially, the interest in afro-Brazilian culture and heritage would be in an anthropological, highly academic sense. However there wasn't a desire on the part of elite academics or editors to assimilate afro-Brazilian writers into the mainstream.

The 'Quilombhoje' group began in 1978 in Sao Paulo in the midst of this cultural climate, and have since published an annual anthology of 'contas' (short stories) or poetry called Cadernos Negros (Black Notebooks). The main poets and writers from the group also act as researchers of the movement- such as Marcio Barbosa, Miriam Alves and Esmerelda Ribeiro. This wave of black consciousness politics and art led onto the emergence of saraus (open mic poetry nights) and other events in the 'periferias' of the city- which specifically produce a platform for which people from the poor areas of the city can get involved with art and culture which isn't bourgeois and exclusionary. A lot of this has a strong relation to Afro-Brazilian heritage and culture, which necessarily discussed and celebrated in these spaces- religion is important, particularly as Afro-Brazilian religious traditions, the most prominent of which is Candomble, are often demonised or side-lined by mainstream culture. Music is also really important, both as a referent point (samba, samba de roda, capoeira berimbau music etc etc)

I have just met with Quilombhoje poet and researcher Miriam Alves, which was really insightful and I would say transformed by perspective on my work. We spoke for about three hours, but she specifically asked for me not to record her. In a sense, it is a shame, because what she told me could have filled a whole research project in itself, but once she began to explain her perspective on being misrepresented by researchers, I understood her bewilderment of being approached by an unknown researcher from the UK (she repeatedly joked about not expecting my accent to be so strong!). Not recording also meant we were able to have frank and honest conversations, where she certainly didn't bite her tounge, and I felt that we were able to build trust as I wasn't pushy and didn't have an agenda (which she seemed to be expecting).

After telling me about her passion for ceramics and the giant sculpture she is currently making in her garden, she spoke about one of her good friends, who is a well-known German writer and researcher of Afro-Brazilian and African literature. The story began with her talking about the way in which our life, language, and way of interacting with each other is intrinsically linked with a colonialist past of slavery, and subsequent white supremacist race relations. She then linked this to the way in which capitalist society has moved past this simple race relation, to a system in which everyone should be a consumer, everyone buys stuff, so if a black person is within this, shopping, consuming goods, then all the better for the sake of capitalism. However, she emphasised that regardless of this shift in the economic system, we now undeniably live a repercussion of this white supremacist world system, and that because of this, it is important for both the privileged and those who are victimised by the system to check themselves,. And by this, Alves meant that we must constantly be aware of the way in which our interactions with others, behaviours, and even choice of subject matter, for a writer for example, are moulded by our conditioning in the world system which was borne out of a history of slavery, entitlement, and violence. With this, she talked about her good friend, and how their relationship of thirty years was only able to be strengthened by the friend repeatedly 'checking herself', and being open to criticism by Miriam, who would often call her out on minor racist ways of thinking, that as Miriam said, 'we are all guilty of having'. Miriam explained her perspective of why it is undeniable we all retain unconscious colonialist ideas, as if we have been borne into a white supremacy, then naturally it takes a lot of conscious effort to undo these lifelong effects of stories which are repeated and repeated.

I realised that I had perhaps come to understand 'Afro-Brazilian literature' through pitying the 'plight' of the Afro-Brazilian writer- even my researcher profile introduces my project within the context of marginality first and foremost. I realised I approached my chosen subject with an attitude which firstly, assumes a privileged and detached position, and which is also offensive and patronising to writers who- as Miriam Alves bluntly told me when I asked her how she managed to deal with the 'difficulties' Afro-Brazilians face, that researchers love to ask her that question, but really she had succeeded as a writer without the help of researchers, and that it is only now she is successful she finds herself met with those she was once excluded by. Of course this doesn't directly answer my question- but the whole point I guess is that why should she answer that question, which is so embedded with a history of exclusion by a certain cultural scene, and also frankly ignorant interviews which left her embittered. I have to be honest, I had never considered myself to be part of this 'problem', to me I asked her relatively innocuous and well intentioned questions, but I began to realise that the role of the distant researcher could with all fairness be construed as a negative, patronising and oppressive figure to the writers their 'work' is about- as Miriam mentioned, who asked these researchers to do their work? And why do they profit from describing the plight of those who never asked for their help? (I have to add that she was mostly positive and informative during our meeting, but at this point in particular she said she decided to be honest with me about her opinion as I seemed to be honest and hadn't asked her the typical questions).

Her anecdotes about her experiences over the last thirty years or so of being a poet were varied, funny, and sometimes sad. She talked about the way in which she loves to perform her poetry, which is very emphatically, sometimes singing, and generallly dramatic. She recounted having been invited to perform at a panel in the US about Brazilian literature, where she performed a poem which describes a young black boy, having been pelted by rocks by jeering white boys in his neighborhood, later finding one of them and beating him to death, and the aftermath of what happens to the boy. She recited the poem to me, it was amazing, but said that when she had performed it at the event and had taken her seat back on the table she shared with a certain famous Brazilian novelist, he had turned to her and said My god, you can speak so well! Being platformed together as the best in Brazilian literature, and he can't believe she can speak eloquently.

Her perspective has given me a view into the way in which I should be conducting my research - something I didn't expect to have to deal with, but which has prompted me to learn quickly, adapt to my situation and also be able to focus my research on something useful, as Miriam Alves recommended I speak to the new generation of young women poets, on whom not much work has been done.