FROM THE BLOOD WE WRITE: BLACK-FEMININE EPISTEMOLOGIES IN “ONLY WOMEN BLEED” BY LIA VIEIRA
Keywords: Ancestrality. Escrevivência. Write with ẹ̀jẹ̀. Black female literature. Black epistemologies.
ABSTRACT
This work proposes a study of self-representation in black-female literature in the work Only women Sangram, by the author Lia Vieira (2011), from the clerk, concept by the author Conceição Evaristo (2008); specifically to write with this blood that the work brings in each flow of the nine short stories that compose it. I propose, here, the concept of writing with ẹ̀jẹ̀, ancestral blood that permeates in a very specific way the veins, the bodies, the lives of black women in an ancestral understanding that we are many, and many are our experiences, however, beyond our own crossings and subjectivities, the intersectional understanding that our common experiences also take place socially brings us the perspective of this collective agency, of this shared blood that is also black as the color of our skin, in our very specific ways of bleeding. If we bleed loves, experiences, if we are the target of neglect, of violence that crosses us, do we bleed in the same way as other groups? The storybook Only women bleed brings stories of black women. Lia Vieira (2011) brings a commitment to racial issues and shows this in her works. The Blood here is black, it is ẹ̀jẹ̀, and it runs through our veins, because it is the continuity of the color of our skin. Based on this understanding, we will think of writing with ẹ̀jẹ̀ as an epistemological category of ancestry, which disallows the signs that were imposed on us as epistemic violence, as Nilma Lino Gomes (2010) brings us. Ancestrality that is beyond what is traditionally understood as time, because it does not go in a straight line, crosses the counts, meets and disperses at its crossroads, it is time through time, the here and yesterday crossed, turning in a spiral, as brings us Leda Maria Martins (2002). The time, the blood, the life that is written feminine and black are ancestors, just as our references, our epistemologies need to be; and black-female literature is an extremely important tool to collaborate in the dissemination of this awareness, of this life that is, as Conceição Evaristo teaches us, committed to writing.