Ângela Lopes Galvão and Celinha:

pioneering women of Cadernos Negros

Abstract

This article intends to approach the participation of Ângela Lopes Galvão and Celinha, name of Célia Aparecida Pereira, in the first volume of the Cadernos Negros series, by analyzing the poems “Retratação” and “Interrogação”, respectively, published in 1978. how much these poems already presented formulating characteristics of the poetry of black female authorship in the later volumes, such as the presence of the subjectivity of the black woman and the questions pertinent to the intersections of gender, race and class, realizing in the act of writing an aesthetic, ethical commitment and political transformation of self and society. Although these two poets have little critical fortune and scarce biographical data, it is invested in these two authors to show the diversity between the writings of black women, thus avoiding memoricide in contemporary black and Brazilian literary histories. To achieve this aim, the historical context capable of propitiating the emergence of Cadernos Negros, the relationship of its participants with the black press and the black movement during the year 1978 is demonstrated. The theoretical support for the reflections on the literary production of black women include, among others, Florentina da Silva Souza, Miriam Alves, Conceição Evaristo and Esmeralda Ribeiro. As for questions related to female gender and race, the article draws on the elaborations of bell hooks, Lélia Gonzalez and Patricia Hill Collins.