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Research Title : Racism as a Weapon of Silencing: The Case of Maria Firmina dos Reis

The very first woman to write a novel in Brazil was Black. Maria Firmina dos Reis, Northeastern Black woman, published Ursula, a novel about slavery, in 1859. The book, published with her own savings, was the first abolitionist piece written in the country where Black enslaved people were written about as equal to whites. Tragically, the book disappeared from shelves in Brazil for almost a century. Not coincidentally, the largest black population in the world outside of Africa is located in Brazil’s Northeast, which is a region that has been historically discriminated against because of this heritage. These factors contributed to the erasure and silencing of the author. Anderson analyzes her unique story, and her lack of presence in Brazilian libraries, to better understand the structural racism of literary production in Brazil.