Nêngua vó: o ventre que pariu o tempo

Abstract

This Dissertation consists on an investigation about Afrodiasporic ancestry based through the narration of the stories of four generations of black women, which belonged to a black Family which lived in the aftermath of abolition of slavery, in the border between Brazil and Uruguay. Having as a starting point an anthropological research sustained by formal academic writing, this work has transcended such forms, favoring creative writing and an immersion on performative art. The persona which initially narrates – and is object of narration – is called Nêngua, a word of Kikongo origin that serve as a metaphor for the role occupied by women vis-à-vis their diasporic communities. My goal is to understand which collective strategies were built by black people in diaspora and how aged people provided care, guidance, and shelter to their communities in situations of enslavement or redesigning projects of freedom after the abolition of slavery. I argue that when ancestors are my own ancestors, ethical and poetic challenges emerge: how to narrate without taking out their dignity again and their self-right to possess their own speeches? This Dissertation is situated at the boundaries, of art and anthropology, between distinct was of narrating a story full of hardships, which still is bleeding but it is on its way to healing, between Brazil and Uruguay, in the heart of the diaspora.