Presidential Session: Vozes/Voces: Black Women's Poetry, Performance, and Politics

Session Submission Type: Roundtable

Abstract

This Presidential session opens a space for two women of color whose powerful voices ring out over the continents and the islands of our América. Elizandra Souza has been an irrepressible force on São Paulo’s cultural scene for two decades. A member of the city’s hip-hop movement in the late 1990s, she has been a leading participant in the Cooperifa poetry slams that take place in São Paulo’s periphery. A journalist by training, Souza is also an activist blogger, and an editor and publisher of black women’s literature. Souza’s poetry directly confronts violence against women and the ongoing dehumanization of black lives in Brazil.
Ana-Maurine Lara is a Dominican-born U.S. based national award-winning poet, fiction writer and playwright. Lara's creative, political and scholarly work engages with questions of black-indigenous freedom, imagining black/indigenous queer futures and the material and imaginative implications of decolonization. She is currently working on the second decade-long project, "PL" - a series of workshops centering the stories of migrants and queers of color throughout the continent.
The performances and conversation between Souza and Lara will explore their shared interest in cultural activism, black aesthetics, identities and experiences, and Afro-descendant spiritual practices, liberation and social justice.

Sub Track

• Presidential Sessions

Session Organizers

• Lorraine Leu, University of Texas/Austin

• Alai Reyes-Santos, University of Oregon

Chair

• Jossianna Arroyo-Martínez, University of Texas/Austin

Presenters

• Elizandra Souza, Independent Writer/Activist

• Ana-Maurine Lara, University of Oregon