XVII Congress of the Brazilian Studies Association

Maria Firmina dos Reis: Contesting Narratives of Oblivion

• In Event: Pioneering Afro-Brazilian Thinkers and their Contemporary Legacies

Abstract

Maria Firmina dos Reis (1825–1917) is widely considered to be Brazil’s first female—and first black female—novelist. Reis published from the 1850s through the early 1900s and was brought into the national spotlight in 1975, when José Nascimento Morais Filho published Maria Firmina: Fragmentos de uma vida, in which he lays out a sketch of her life and reproduces as many of Reis’s texts as he could find (some of which are no longer available in their original form). In this paper I challenge the commonly repeated narrative that Maria Firmina and her works were forgotten for a century. Though her oeuvre has undoubtedly enjoyed a revival in readership both inside and outside of academia (e.g., her designation as the “autora homenageada” at the 2022 Festa Literária Internacional de Paraty), assertions that she was lost to oblivion are both misleading and problematic, and they run counter to the evidence available in archives in Maranhão. The first part of this presentation outlines the chronology and number of Maria Firmina’s publications, in an attempt to chart the trajectory of her work during her lifetime and her continued legacy. The second part of this paper discusses three texts published in 2022 (a biography, a graphic novel, and a children’s book) that recount Maria Firmina’s life and that make her works and legacy more widely accessible.

Author

• Jordan Jones, Brigham Young University