D uring his stay in Brazil, where he went on the occasion of the publication of Pelourinho, his first novel translated into Brazilian Portuguese, Tierno Monénembo met a number of personalities from the world of culture. He spoke with Cidinha Da Silva, Afro-Brazilian writer, who gave him her feelings about Africa.
Africa Point: Belo Horizonte, Minas Gerais, is your hometown. Is she the main character in your books like Salvador de Bahia is in Jorge Amado’s?
Cidinha da Silva: Not at all. I write chronicles and short stories (short fiction), literature for children and adolescents and essays. The geographical, political and affective space of my creation is quite diffuse.
The State of Minas Gerais has very strong historical ties, very painful even with Africa. I am thinking of Xica da Silva in Diamantina and Chico-Rey in Ouro Preto. What does the word “Africa” ??mean to a writer from Belo Horizonte today?
Do you have books translated into other languages? For example in French or in English?
So far, I haven’t had my novels translated and published outside of Brazil. On the other hand, I have chronicles, short stories and essays translated into the languages ??cited and published in certain countries. These are mainly texts from my following books: Parem de nos matar! (Stop Killing Us), Sobre-viventes (Survivors) and Um Exu em Nova York (An Exu in New York). The predominant themes are: the functioning of racism and racial discrimination in Brazilian daily life, the question of African descent, the question of traditions (African, Afro-Brazilian, Afro-indigenous and Afro-Panamerican) in tension and in dialogue with contemporaneity!
Are you interested in African literature? If so, who are your favorite authors?
Have you ever had the opportunity to go to Africa?
Only South Africa (Durban) in 2001, to participate in the Third World Conference against Racism (UN). I also had a one-week literary residency in Luanda (Angola) last March.???????
Africa and Brazil are very close, both geographically and humanly. However, their economic and cultural exchanges are weak, if not non-existent. What would it take to better connect these two worlds that have so much to say and do together?
Our primordial connections are given by the African ancestry which is provided to us and by the cultural and technological references (economic use of technologies improved by enslaved Africans from the 17th to the 19th century, those of metallurgy, weaving and rice cultivation in particular). In economic (Brazil has had a position of dominance over African countries whose economies are more fragile), intellectual and political exchanges, Brazil has always been marked by a racial perspective, with some modifications during the governments of Lula and Dilma (2003-2016). So that we can dialogue under conditions of equality and fair exchange.
The notion of negritude has long served as a rallying point for black intellectuals. However, a lot of water has flowed under the bridge since Chants d’Ombre by Léopold Sédar Senghor and Cahier d’un retour au pays natal by Aimé Césaire. Does that word still have meaning to you today?
It is said that the relationship is poetic between Africa and the West Indies, ideological with Black Americans, and carnal with Brazilians. What do you think of these assertions?
I never heard them. So I can only say that we black Brazilians are not very internationalized. We travel little through the African Diaspora and Africa. We don’t know, we don’t talk, we don’t live together. That’s a shame. In fact, I do not feel able to respond to these assertions born of intellectual debates of which I am not aware.???????
Much is touted about Brazil’s interracial mix, the famous “misturo”. Yet the political and economic marginalization of blacks is manifest. How do we experience our triple condition as a woman, a black woman and a writer in today’s Brazil?
In the realm of literature, in particular, we live in a time when a few black female writers have achieved some notoriety. This is linked, mainly, to the diversity policies that the large publishing conglomerates have been forced to adopt. On the other hand, there is the contribution of small and medium publishers who publish black authors with the aim of promoting biblio-diversity. Movements for political representation have also opened up a space for the narratives of black women authors.
From my point of view, the greatest challenge of the moment is that black women writers be read in their singularity and not as a monolithic block under the term “Black writer”. We are multiple, polyphonic, and this is an obvious condition of literary output.
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* 1986, Ex aequo Black African Literary Prize for “The Scales of the Sky”; 2008, Renaudot Prize for “The King of Kahel”; 2012, Erckmann-Chatrian Prize and Grand Prix of the Métis novel for “The Black Terrorist”; 2013, Grand Prix Palatine and Prix Ahmadou-Kourouma for “The Black Terrorist”; 2017, Grand Prix de la francophonie for all of his work. Tierno Monénembo’s latest publication was published by Editions du Seuil. Its title: “Saharan Indigo”.
