Resumo:
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.
