Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2022, Portuguese

This dissertation examines the thematic connections and the formal structure shared between the literary texts written by several black women authors in Portugal and Brazil over the last five years. Since literary and academic events transitioned to virtual platforms in 2020, the first year of the COVID-19 pandemic, black women writers from Portugal and Brazil, both Portuguese speaking countries, found a place online, in the form of a kind of virtual diaspora, where they could come together to discuss their lives as black women in their respective countries through their written literary works. Here, I analyze the texts of seven prominent black women writers: Bianca Santana, Conceicao Evaristo, Cristiane Sobral, and Cidinha da Silva from Brazil, and Djaimilia Pereira, Telma Tvon and Yara Monteiro from Portugal. My analysis shows that several similar themes (e.g., racism against blacks, recognition of the importance of African culture, and constructing of a multicultural identity), the use of Polyphony, Magical Realism, Animism Realism, and an Autobiographic style of writing all work to shape these women's narratives, while alluding to the oral tradition of African culture. The stories of these black women, enriched by their experiences, share a common objective – combating racism and sexism and understanding their multicultural identity. Taking from an idea described by Professor Conceicao Evaristo in her 2003 talk at the Federal University of Paraiba, I frequently use the concept of “escrevivencias”, which translates to “writings about their experiences”, and include additional supporting evidence from other authors such as Lelia Gonzalez, Teofilo de Queiroz Junior, Frantz Fanon, Saidiya Hartman, Stuart Hall and Homi Bhabha to understand, in depth, how individuals from African diasporas are described in each analyzed text. I also provide examples of the use of Magical Realism described by Alejo Carpentier, Animism Realism by Pepetela, polyphony by Mikhail Bakhtin a (open full item for complete abstract)

Committee: Isis Barra Costa (Advisor); Richard Vasques (Committee Member); Laura Podalsky (Committee Member); Pedro Pereira (Advisor) Subjects: Comparative Literature; Gender Studies; Latin American Literature; Latin American Studies; Literature

Doctor of Philosophy, The Ohio State University, 2020, Spanish and Portuguese

The present work reflects on the most noteworthy recent trends in contemporary, postcolonial Portuguese literature authored by women writers, namely Isabela Figueiredo's Caderno de memorias coloniais (2009), Dulce Maria Cardoso's O retorno (2011), Aida Gomes's Os pretos de Pousaflores (2011), Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida's Esse cabelo (2015), Isabela Figueiredo's most recent novel A Gorda (2016), and Alexandra Lucas Coelho's Deus-dara (2016). Specifically, I address how these women writers engage the public sphere through their fiction's focus on formative but still controversial events in Portugal's recent history. I argue that the novels I analyze play a critical and transformative role as they question the still imperialist discourse of Portuguese national culture produced by the state and the media, among others. By giving voice to other stories and/or experiences that were, and still are, traditionally excluded by the hegemonic narratives of the nation, and inspired by the sociology of absences developed by Portuguese sociologist Boaventura de Sousa Santos, I claim that they form a canon of a "literature of absences" that focuses on colonialism and its aftermath in order to push the boundaries of the still crystalized representations of the Portuguese empire, and to showcase their myriad reverberations in postcolonial Portugal. Ultimately, in times that call for an urgent and necessary decolonization of the former European empires, this dissertation aims to contribute to surveying the different ways contemporary, women-authored fiction in Portugal imagines a post-imperial condition.

Committee: Pedro Pereira Ph.D. (Advisor); Ignacio Corona Ph.D. (Committee Member); Isis Barra Costa Ph.D. (Committee Member) Subjects: Literature; Romance Literature