We will discuss the place of the mestizo female body in Brazilian society at the beginning of the 20th century. We are interested in presenting the story of Leda Rios and developing initial investigations into the barriers that this mixed-race poet encountered when she began her career. Leda Rios worked in the Brazilian press in the first two decades of the 20th century. After publishing several articles and columns, as well as two books of poetry and theatre plays, the author abandoned writing at the height of her production, at the age of thirty. Despite the recognition of her work at the time of her writing life, Leda Rios was erased from Brazilian literary history. We can only find traces of her literary life in Rio’s National Library. We want to investigate the obstacles she faced during the period of the Brazilian belle époque, such as the racism that emerged with force at that time, seeking to define social roles.

Keywords: Leda Rios, mixed-race poet, racism, obstacles, Brazilian belle époque.

Bio note

Maria Teresa Salgado Guimarães da Silva is a full professor of African Literatures in Portuguese at the Faculty of Arts and Humanities of the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro (UFRJ). She has a master’s degree in Brazilian Literature (UFRJ), a PhD in African Literatures (PUC-Rio) and a degree in English. She carried out post-doctoral research, with an emphasis on Images of the pursuit of happiness and female authorship in Portuguese-language literatures, at the Sorbonne (Paris IV) and the University of Orléans, respectively. She has experience in Portuguese-language literature (Brazil, Africa, and Portugal), and comparative literature.  She has been coordinating the ‘Writings of the female body’ research group at UFRJ’s Faculty of Arts and Humanities since 2015. Over the last ten years, her research has focused on images of the search for happiness, images of the female body and psychological suffering in Portuguese-language literature written by women. She has organised several works in the field of Portuguese-language African literature and comparative literature. She is currently collating the publications of the Brazilian writer and journalist Leda Rios and promoting studies on her work for a book due to be published later this year.

Organisers: Doctoral Programme in Discourses: History, Culture, Society (FLUC/CES)