Black Female Narration, Self-Definition, and Intersectionality in Por cima do mar and The Hate U Give

Black Feminist Foundations

This article draws heavily on theoretical concepts from Black feminist movements that emerged throughout the Americas during the second half of the twentieth century, and which are conditioned equally by racial and gender identity. Lélia Gonzalez’s notion of amefricanidade is foundational in framing my analysis. Gonzalez critiques the terms Afro-American and African-American because they imply that Black individuals can only be found in the United States, rather than throughout the Americas, and because they signal “a reprodução inconsciente da posição imperialista dos Estados Unidos, que afirmam ser ‘A AMÉRICA’” (1988, 76). Hoping to foster “uma consciência efetiva de nós mesmos, enquanto descendentes de africanos,” Gonzalez proposes the term amefricanos “para designar a todos nós” (76; emphasis original). In advocating for this expansive term, which supersedes linguistic and territorial boundaries, Gonzalez aims to cultivate a sense of collectivity and shared experience among those with Black African heritage, though of course without erasing or homogenizing all particularities of Black life in the Americas. Rather, Gonzalez proposes amefricanidade as a tool to “voltar o nosso olhar para a realidade em que vivem todos os amefricanos do continente” and to recognize the historical and cultural factors that transform them “no que somos hoje: amefricanos” (78–79; emphasis original).³

Though amefricanidade has enormous potential in building solidarity between Afro-descendant populations and helping shape Africana studies, there have long been differing agendas in relation to how to advocate for amefricano populations. According to bell hooks, since the nineteenth century US amefricanas have often found themselves in a “double bind” (1981, 3), forced to choose between supporting “a black movement that primarily served the interests of black male patriarchs and a women’s movement which primarily served the interests of racist white women” (9). In Brazil the trajectory is similar: according to Gonzalez, the Brazilian feminist movement “geralmente ‘se esquece’ da questão racial,” and the participation of Black women within Brazil’s Movimento Negro has likewise been “comumente ‘esquecido,’” resulting in erasures of daily amefricana experiences marked on the one hand by “discriminação racial” and on the other “pelo machismo não só dos homens brancos, mas dos próprios negros” (1984, 8).

In addition to observing race- and gender-based marginalization, a host of scholars including Gonzalez, Patricia Hill Collins, and Angela Davis view social class as a conditioning factor in amefricana experiences. The overlapping of these different factors is often referred to as intersectionality, a term first coined by Kimberlé Crenshaw in 1989 when analyzing the experiences of Black women in the United States. Crenshaw cautions against viewing gender and race as “mutually exclusive categories of experience and analysis” and critiques assumptions that “disadvantage” occurs “along a single categorical axis” (139–40). She explains how different factors compound, conditioning a person’s experience in a way that is “greater than the sum of racism and sexism” or other factors (140). In other words, though factors like race, gender, and class can be discussed discretely at a theoretical level, in lived experience these factors are always entangled and interrelated. The impact of these intersections is particularly pronounced for those who depart from the white, male, middle-class “norm” in one or more ways; thus, working-class amefricanas (like the protagonists analyzed in this article) may experience marginalization because of class, gender, and race simultaneously, whereas working-class Black men would most likely be marginalized because of class and race but not because of gender. Crenshaw’s notion of intersectionality overlaps with Gonzalez’s ideas of amefricana experiences in the sense that both acknowledge the unique hardships faced by women of color and the need to consider their situations as Black women, rather than only as women or only as Black Americans.

In considering the daily experiences of amefricanas, contemporary author Conceição Evaristo highlights the connection between writing and living through her notion of escrevivência, along with the ways in which Black women have been made invisible in official histories and in literature, or else portrayed according to various stereotypes. Against this backdrop,

as escritoras negras buscam inscrever no corpus literário brasileiro imagens de uma auto-representação. Surge a fala de um corpo que não é apenas descrito, mas antes de tudo vivido. A escre(vivência) das mulheres negras explicita as aventuras e as desventuras de quem conhece uma dupla condição, que a sociedade teima em querer inferiorizada, mulher e negra. Na escrita busca-se afirmar a[s] duas faces da moeda num único movimento … (2020, 223)

Scholars and readers rightly emphasize the connection between living and writing woven into escrevivência. Equally important but less frequently noted, however, is the third concept embedded in Evaristo’s term: vision. In fact, in the subtitle to her text outlining escrevivência, she writes the word like this: “escre(vi)(vendo)me” (219). In this way, Evaristo fuses the ideas of writing, living, and seeing as interrelated and equally important aspects of escrevivência, which intertwine to enable amefricanas and others to express themselves. In other words, escrevivência constitutes writing that draws on lived experience and that helps adjust perceptions of the characters and issues being portrayed—not only in readers but also in the writers themselves, thereby reconfiguring their own vision in transformative ways. Thus, as amefricanas write, they engage in self-definition (Collins), widening the panorama of literature and broadening conceptions of Black Americans—and especially of amefricanas—in readers’ minds, whether or not those readers identify as heirs to the shared legacy of amefricanidade.

Selecting Texts

Before proceeding with my analysis, I wish to contextualize the selection of these two novels. Angie Thomas (The Hate U Give) identifies as a Black woman and regularly draws on her own lived experience in her writing. Her novel has been criticized by a wide range of readers (and non-readers), some of whom take issue with its portrayals of police brutality, others of whom believe it is inappropriate for the teen audience it targets, and still others of whom view the book as overly simplistic in portraying the complexities of racial injustice in the United States. Despite these critiques, the book’s compelling narration and its enormous success and reach (including its adaptation into a 2018 film) make it a valuable case study of the impact that a work of antiracist literature can have.

For its part, while it has not achieved levels of international fame similar to Thomas’s novel, Por cima do mar has been well received and in 2019 won the prestigious Casa de las Américas prize. In writing the novel, which is narrated by a Black Brazilian woman, Deborah Dornellas drew on her academic training as a historian and her extensive experience studying cultures of the African diaspora. Despite this (and although she is married to an Angolan man), Dornellas is careful to point out that she is not Afro-Brazilian. This naturally raises questions of lugar de fala, which in the literary arena is often used to interrogate the ethical nature of characters created by writers whose identities differ from those rooted in their own lived experiences. This notion frequently appears in a negative sense, to restrict what individuals can or should say.

For Afro-Brazilian author Geovani Martins, such constraints—whether instituted by others or self-imposed—are problematic to the degree that they undermine interracial understanding and solidarity. For Martins, it is crucial that white people “se interessem em falar sobre o racismo, se interessem em contar histórias sobre o racismo,” and he laments many people’s tendency to appeal to lugar de fala “como uma ferramenta de se omitir para certos assuntos. Como quem diz, ‘Olha, eu não posso falar sobre isso então eu não vou falar porque esse não é o meu lugar.’ Eu não acredito que seja por aí” (2019). Martins suggests that when social pressure restricts individuals’ ability to speak about race and racism, that can easily transform into an excuse to avoid thinking about those topics entirely, which perpetuates problems that continue to pervade Brazilian and other societies. Writer and poet Cristiane Sobral holds a similar view, asserting that “as pessoas que lutam por transformações não têm de se privar de escrever sobre personagens negras. Se têm sensibilidade e interesse em falar sobre isso, falem. Tem uma preocupação de complexificar as personagens, de querer de fato chegar um pouco mais perto, para olhar melhor. Acho que todo mundo pode fazer isso” (2023).⁴

In line with these perspectives, I propose reading Dornellas’s novel as a product of imaginative listening, in which the author uses her narrative to explore perspectives similar to and drastically different from her own.⁵ Put simply, in relation to experiences of Black Brazilian women, Dornellas’s novel represents an attempt to “chegar um pouco mais perto, para olhar melhor” (Sobral 2023), while at the same time taking care not to “eclipsar” or “apagar” (as Marcelo D’Salete [2019] puts it) the voices of Black authors themselves. Studying the parallels between Por cima do mar and The Hate U Give can be helpful and instructive for Black and non-Black readers alike and can greatly expand their moral imaginations.

Emergent Female Protagonists

Though Dornellas and Thomas have different racial identities, their narrator-protagonists Lígia and Starr are linked by amefricanidade, and both face a “matrix of domination” formed by intersecting barriers of class, gender, and race (Collins 1990, 227–8). As the novels progress, each protagonist’s view of herself and of the world evolve, and each challenges stereotypical narratives about Black womanhood while asserting her own self-worth. Writing is crucial in this process, and the overlapping of writing with lived experience and perception (escrevivência) shapes their ability to acquire expanded self-awareness and define themselves through discourse.⁶ By foregrounding the agency and fortitude of amefricana protagonists, these novels affirm that each Black woman is “as plausible and inherently proper a citizen-subject as anyone else” and therefore deserves “inclusion in the human rights franchise” (Slaughter 2007, 137–8).

In addition to representing formative journeys from childhood to adulthood (often precipitated by traumatic experiences), the novels document transformations from women who are unsure of their Blackness and hesitate to assert it into what Mary Helen Washington terms “emergent women”: women who possess self-assurance and use their voices to affirm their identities, thereby claiming a place in American societies (cited in Collins 1990, 95).

Such a transformation is manifest in Por cima do mar. The novel, which portrays Lígia’s life from childhood to middle age, begins in Ceilândia, a low-income community on the periphery of Brasília, where her family struggles financially and several friends are injured or killed in violent encounters with police or others. While attending the University of Brasília (UnB), Lígia is raped by two white men—a devastatingly traumatic experience that resurges via painful flashbacks throughout the novel. The flashbacks function as textual anchors, reminding readers of the reiteration of violence in individual and collective Black experience. In the face of these challenges, Lígia earns a PhD in history, secures a teaching position at UnB, and becomes a wife and mother. In what she posits as a crossing back to Africa, she spends several years living in Angola (where she marries an Angolan man), to the point that she proclaims her identity as “Afro-brasileira. Brasileirafricana” (2018, 225). These terms, along with her professional success and powerful narrative, manifest her self-assurance and independence. They fuse Africa and Brazil, simultaneously tracing her progress backward to her geographical and genealogical origins (from which her ancestors were forcibly removed) and forward in developing and proclaiming amefricanidade as a crucial element of her identity.

In The Hate U Give, readers accompany sixteen-year-old Starr Carter after she leaves a party with her friend Khalil. The two are stopped by a police officer, who fatally shoots Starr’s unarmed friend. Initially afraid to speak out, Starr eventually decides to use her voice to fight for justice for Khalil, testifying in court and giving a television interview about the incident. When the officer involved is not convicted of wrongdoing, she joins a protest that escalates into a riot, and at the end of the novel she reflects on the ways and reasons to continue fighting racial injustice. Though the novel covers a relatively brief period of time, it accompanies Starr’s development into a self-assured woman and her growing resolve to support antiracist resistance.

As noted earlier, both novels are narrated by their amefricana protagonists. This affords readers direct access to characters’ lived experiences and emotions and reduces the distance between them. As Lígia and Starr undergo formative experiences in their societies, readers are likewise educated and shaped, pushed to consider perspectives with which they may not be familiar. Through their imaginative forays into protagonists’ lives, readers—especially non-Black readers—learn more deeply and witness how amefricana experiences are conditioned by oppressive matrices of domination and the physical and symbolic violence that attend them. This prompts affective crossings that usher readers into spaces of learning, without disregarding possible differences between characters’ lives and their own. In these manifestations of escrevivência, each protagonist assumes a pedagogical role, instructing readers and expanding their vision and moral imaginations regardless of their own racial identity.

Unearthing “Forgotten” Histories of Violence

Physical violence is one of the most recurring and clearly visible manifestations of structural racism in these novels, and though in The Hate U Give it is Khalil who experiences it most prominently, this article focuses on how it affects women, whether physically or emotionally. In Por cima do mar, for example, Lígia recounts her experience during the 1986 raid of the Quarentão dance club, which police charge into while yelling “branco sai, preto fica!” (2018, 79). In the confusion that follows, she witnesses young Black men being thrown to the ground and beaten, gunshots, and the sight of “uma menina, preta como eu,” with “o rosto vermelho de sangue” (80). While Lígia herself does not experience physical violence, she sees in the girl’s bloody countenance a reflection of herself and a manifestation of what could easily happen to her. Witnessing the assault and its aftermath—gunshot wounds, broken legs, paralysis, an amputated leg—traumatizes Lígia, filling her head with “imagens e sons horríveis” that torment her long after (81). In addition to that night’s physical brutality, further violence is enacted upon those who were there when, upon attempting to demand accountability, they find that “nenhuma autoridade quis ouvir” and that even the media remain silent: “Todos preferiam fingir que o ‘branco sai, preto fica’ não tinha acontecido” (83). This symbolic erasure of police brutality and Black suffering from the public narrative constitutes yet another component of the intersectional matrix of domination Lígia and others confront in the story. By unearthing this historical, real-life incident, the narrator resists public officials’ selective amnesia and unapologetically foregrounds it in the history of Brasília.⁷

Lígia draws parallels between these events and a 1959 incident, which happened after a group of candangos (construction workers who at the time were still actively building the nation’s new capital) protested against poor working and living conditions. Sometime after the demonstration, a police force arrived at their camp: “Entraram atirando. Um candango foi morto enquanto dormia. Tudo indica que foi retaliação” (85). As with the 1986 incident, Lígia’s description cannot undo what happened, but it adds another, lesser-known story to the official record, communicating dissent against dominant narratives and inviting readers to view the city’s history differently. Her comment that anyone can learn about these events—”Bastam dois ou três cliques em sites de busca” (86)—invites readers to dig into the city’s obscured history, spotlighting the lives of people like Lígia and her family, who exist in tandem with but apart from those in the Plano Piloto. In this sense, Lígia’s narrative taps into a larger movement of brasilienses who use their art to assert what Sophia Beal terms a “creative right to the city” (2020, 14). In doing so, they challenge the marginalization to which they are subjected and reclaim their right to access and represent the city via cultural expression.⁸

Lígia continues, informing readers about the so-called “Campanha de Erradicação de Invasões” (CEI) of 1971, in which the government demolished various favelas, including Vila IAPI, where Lígia’s family lived (2018, 87–88). Structures considered inadequate were marked with an X and then razed, displacing their residents to a more distant—and therefore less visible—community called Ceilândia. That name, which derives from the campaign’s acronym, CEI, represents a constant reminder to residents of their physical displacement years earlier, through which, as one of Lígia’s aged friends puts it, “Tiraram nós da vista deles” (88). The literal marking of undesirable homes during the campaign mirrors and prefigures the symbolic marking—based especially on the intersecting categories of race and social status—of bodies deemed unacceptable and the violence subsequently employed against them. Lígia’s description echoes and inverts the call from the Quarentão episode: rather than “branco sai, preto fica,” the CEI enacts a policy of what can be called “preto sai, branco fica,” in which Black residents are displaced to make way for white brasilienses. Though physically excluded from view, in Lígia’s brief history lesson Ceilândia and its residents become focal points for readers; her account redraws the map of Brasília, creating symbolic space for the geographically marginalized.

Though Lígia comes of age after the 1959 incident and her family’s 1971 displacement to Ceilândia, as she matures she learns the history of the city, grappling with its implications and with the pain she inherits—what Marianne Hirsch would call postmemory (“traumatic recall … at a generational remove” [2012, 5–6]). In part due to her formal training as a historian, and in part by observing her parents and friends in Ceilândia, Lígia excavates and experiences some measure of the trauma suffered by previous generations, and she turns to writing, using storytelling as a form of “working-through” that allows her to envision possibilities in her present and future, despite “never fully transcending” the trauma she and her community undergo (LaCapra 1999, 717).

Though hesitant at first, Lígia comes to recognize the need to speak out against racism whenever and wherever she encounters it (2018, 82). This shift in mentality is crucial since, as Kay Schaffer and Sidonie Smith observe, rights only “become activated” when victims “come forward and testify to their experience. Their testimony brings into play, implicitly or explicitly, a rights claim” (2004, 3). In other words, Lígia’s narrative is important because without it (and others like it) the rights claims of amefricanos fade from public view. Her written descriptions of rights violations (whether witnessed or personally experienced) become de facto acts of testimony, issuing rights claims on readers and demanding their engagement with amefricana experiences and the violence they endure. For Lígia’s part, the determination to actively and vocally oppose racism attests to her formation as a subject of rights, both within the narrative and within Brazilian society at large.

Police Brutality and Resounding Trauma

Deciding to speak out against racial injustice and violence is similarly crucial to Starr’s development in The Hate U Give. One of the clearest manifestations of such violence is overly aggressive policing, and the impact of Khalil’s wrongful death at the hands of police is evident in the way Starr structures her narrative: “Part 1: When It Happens,” “Part 2: Five Weeks After It,” “Part 3: Eight Weeks After It,” etc. The use of “It” is important, as it points to the unnamable, incommunicable nature of tragedy and loss. Plotting the novel’s events in relation to Khalil’s death also underscores how the aftermath of violence reverberates long after the initial act, expanding to affect the entire Garden Heights community. As in Por cima do mar, the narrator herself is not the direct victim of police violence, but she is traumatized by witnessing it firsthand and is haunted by the memory of it throughout the narrative.⁹ Similarly, though many readers may not have firsthand experience with the kinds of trauma described here, the act of reading makes them secondary witnesses who can no longer plead ignorance and are thus summoned to respond.

In The Body in Pain (1985), Elaine Scarry explains the difficulty of grasping another’s pain: even if, “with the best effort of sustained attention one successfully apprehends it [another’s pain], the aversiveness of the ‘it’ one apprehends will only be a shadowy fraction of the actual ‘it’” (4). Thus, though Starr sees “the bullets rip through [Khalil]” and watches his final breaths, her emotional pain differs from her friend’s physical pain, and any pain readers feel while taking in her description, even if they have experienced similar traumas, is different from the unique anguish Starr experiences (2017, 343). A frustrated outburst—”Nobody understands!” (343, emphasis original)—underscores the distance between her and readers, reminding them that they cannot fully know what she is feeling. Likewise, this outcry encourages them to connect with her without falling prey to what LaCapra terms “the dubious appropriation of the status of victim” (1999, 717) and what Saidiya Hartman calls “the thin line between witness and spectator,” which authors can unwittingly cross, since when portraying another’s suffering they continually run the risk of eliciting enjoyment in readers’ minds (1997, 19). As Scarry explains, another’s pain “cannot be denied” and “cannot be confirmed” (1985, 4). Because Starr’s pain is individual and not entirely accessible to them, readers must be willing to listen and to validate her emotions. This includes her recollection of another traumatic experience: when she was ten, her friend Natasha was killed just feet away from her in a drive-by shooting (2017, 23). These deaths speak to the prevalence and intersectionality of violence in the lives of working-class amefricanas and amefricanos. Natasha’s killers are never identified, but it is telling that she and Khalil both die in the majority-Black neighborhood of Garden Heights, rather than in the wealthy, predominantly white area of Riverton Hills. As happens in Por cima do mar, in which Lígia’s peripheral physical location is bound up with her experience of social marginalization, Starr repeatedly witnesses physical violence in specific places and learns to associate the two.

Plotting and Contesting Racialized Violence

In Demonic Grounds: Black Women and Cartographies of Struggle (2006), Katherine McKittrick urges readers to analyze “the where of blackness, rather than the sole indicators of identity/experience” (xviii; emphasis added). In Starr’s case, there are at least two wheres of Blackness: Garden Heights, where she witnesses violence regularly but can be herself, and Williamson High School, a majority-white private institution. There, her physical safety is more assured, but her Blackness is subjected to a different kind of violence—she becomes “Williamson Starr,” who “doesn’t use slang” and who represses certain impulses and expressions so as to never “give anyone a reason to call her ghetto” (2017, 70).

Studying the where of Blackness also requires considering how geography conditions the actions of white individuals in relation to amefricanos. Immediately after Khalil is shot, Starr attempts to help him and, though unarmed, soon finds the officer’s gun pointed at her. This gesture reflects the officer’s perception of a teenage Black girl as a threat and exposes how racial stereotyping foments the aggressive and discriminatory police activity that Lawrence Brown calls “hyperpolicing” (2021, 11). Indeed, Starr’s father observes that things would have turned out very differently “[i]f this was out in Riverton Hills and [Khalil’s] name was Richie” (2017, 51). His comment reflects a specific kind of intersectionality common to many linked by amefricanidade and illustrates precisely what McKittrick advocates: an attunement to the intersection of race, class, and geography. Perhaps because of their common experience of spatial marginalization, residents of Garden Heights become what Starr calls a “strange, dysfunctional-as-hell family” that is nonetheless “still a family” (2017, 328). Community solidarity does not erase the intersecting layers of social and geographical marginalization, but it complicates the narrative of homogenous and violent Black communities, constructing a mental bridge that enables readers to see the complex geography of these spaces.

In Por cima do mar, the where of Lígia’s existence conditions how her Blackness manifests itself. The nature of life in Ceilândia is such that she confronts news of “uma morte violenta por semana” (2018, 162). One such death is that of her friend Moscão, a talented musician found dead from gunshot wounds one morning in the scrubby cerrado area. Lígia’s brother explains: “Disseram também que foi dívida de droga. Mas tem gente dizendo que foi a polícia” (162). Referring to an Arrigo Barnabé album entitled Suspeito, which Moscão had delivered to Lígia the day before his death, the narrator observes: “Suspeito. Suspeito. Suspeito. Não é só nome de disco. Em alguns lugares, é pena de morte” (163–4). Her percussive repetition of the word “suspeito” drives home the destructive impact of symbolic violence, which brands peripheral residents with negative images used to justify the violation of their rights by police and others. Furthermore, the association of “alguns lugares” with police violence showcases Lígia’s understanding that the experience of Blackness is not just about race; it is also conditioned by a geography that, though diffuse, nonetheless encompasses mainly low-income and racialized communities.

Faced with abundant physical violence, Lígia and Starr learn to push back, rejecting the complacency with which outsiders accept higher death rates in majority-Black communities. Lígia puts it this way: “Vivemos menos, morremos mais, morremos jovens, de mortes violentas. Quem se importa? A tragédia é vossa, vivam e morram com ela, dizem. Não. Não mais” (165). The first-person plural conjugations (“vivemos,” “morremos”) in the first sentence of this passage contrast an us (in which Lígia includes herself) with a them, attesting to the differing experiences of Brasília’s residents. Whether non-amefricano readers are included in the us or the them depends on how they read the ambiguously conjugated “dizem.” This verb’s subject could be an unspecified “they” or a plural “you.” The uncertainty challenges readers to reflect on their view of the death and suffering of those on the margins. It forces them to decide whether to group themselves with those who dismiss the tragedy or to distance themselves from the callousness of this response. Either way, Lígia’s emphatic affirmation (“Não. Não mais.”) challenges societal apathy and reflects her development as an emergent woman. It also exposes the reality of ongoing structural racism, which readers can join her in actively opposing.

Summoning Witnesses and Emotional Responses to Female Objectification

Another outgrowth of negative racial stereotypes is sexual violence. Such violence, along with the discovery of writing as a means of “working-through” trauma (LaCapra 1999), figure prominently in Lígia’s narrative, and she experiences both firsthand. As she walks through a densely vegetated area toward the UnB campus one day, two white men pin her down and brutally rape her. The chapter describing this attack has no prefatory explanation; it begins with surgical vocabulary that is both jarring and wrenching:

Penetra com força o orifício, rompe a película, segue encostado às paredes, rasgando os tecidos, ferindo a mucosa. Atinge o cérvix. Muitas vezes, muitas vezes, muitas vezes. Se um óvulo desce pelas trompas nesse instante, pode haver a fecundação, e o ignóbil já é parte de você. Demônio criado na garrafa.

Seu corpo não é de vidro, mas quebra. O indesejado fica dentro, em cada estilhaço. Não há banho que tire, não há cirurgia que extirpe, não há navio que desterre. (2018, 106)

The emotional detachment of the first half of this passage is broken by the harsh language of the second half—words like “ignóbil” and “demônio” being used to describe her attackers and to signal their brutal presence assaulting and shattering her body. In a later flashback, Lígia recalls “a dor me rasgando, as merdas que me diziam. Queria berrar, chorar, desaparecer. Foi estudar, nega safada? Eu sei o que você quer, nega nojenta” (111). The disparaging question (“Foi estudar, nega safada?”) exposes racist attitudes that deny amefricanos’ right to occupy university spaces and, by extension, the benefits of full citizenship. The vulgar follow-up comment (“Eu sei o que você quer”) pinpoints the violent sexualization of Black femininity in Brazilian society and the assumption that all amefricanas are sexually aggressive, while the terms “safada” and “nojenta” express the simultaneous exploitation and rejection of Black female bodies.¹⁰

These unflinching descriptions evoke visceral reactions in readers and reflect brutal violations of Black bodies past and present. As Alexa Weik von Mossner notes, narratives can push readers “to simulate that sense or feeling in their minds, using their own real-world experiences as models and their own bodies as sounding boards for the simulation.” These simulations can continue to reverberate in readers’ consciousness, influencing them long after they have concluded the reading experience (Weik von Mossner 2017, 7), and they can also impress on or remind readers of the very real ways amefricanas are dehumanized by society.¹¹ As Djamila Ribeiro writes in her Pequeno manual antirracista (2019), “[a] sexualização retira a humanidade das mulheres, pois deixamos de ser vistas com toda a complexidade do ser humano. Somos muitas vezes importunadas, tocadas, invadidas sem a nossa permissão” (41). Rather than seeing her as a human being, Lígia’s attackers view her simply as an object for gratification—as something to be forcefully possessed and then discarded.

Taken by itself, the scene of Lígia’s rape could be read as doing exactly what Saidiya Hartman cautions against: attempting to promote identification and empathy by resorting to depictions of violence. Such attempts, according to Hartman, run “the risk of fixing and naturalizing this condition of pained embodiment,” alternately “extend[ing] humanity to the dispossessed” and “effac[ing] and restrict[ing] black sentience” through the very nature of “the spectral and spectacular character” of the suffering portrayed (1997, 20). In other words, while writers’ depictions of Black bodies in extreme physical or emotional anguish may be calculated to elicit empathy in readers, it may actually communicate to readers (especially white readers) that suffering is “the defining feature of those subjects excluded from the law” (Weheliye 2014, 75), or that they need only empathize with their Black counterparts in extremely violent situations but not in the day-to-day challenges they may face. Because readers have access to Lígia’s life story, however—a story narrated not by another but by herself (albeit ultimately created by a non-Black author)—pain is not the predominant characteristic of her narrative. By narrating her own life story, which includes this traumatic event but encompasses so much more, Lígia expands readers’ perceptions beyond “the shocking and ghostly presence of pain” (Hartman 1997, 20).

This expansive process, for both readers and for Lígia herself, takes time. Two months after the trauma, Lígia notes that she is still in the “ressaca do ataque,” explaining that “[f]eridas assim não cicatrizam rápido. Algumas, nunca” (2018, 135). Her emotional injuries are torn open again when (on separate occasions) she comes across her attackers. The first occurs just months after the incident. Glimpsing “o pequeno” at a concert and hearing his voice prompts a visceral reaction, inducing dizziness and a violent episode of vomiting (142). Twenty years later, while at a restaurant Lígia reencounters “[o] grandalhão. O monstro” (181). She knows him immediately, but he does not recognize her: “Ele me olhava, mas não me via” (180). Lígia, who hours after being raped “chor[ou] choro invisível” (113), is once again made invisible by her attacker, who sees a Black woman before him but does not recognize her as his victim. These episodes, along with other flashbacks, attest to the psychic scarring that persists long after her physical wounds have healed.

Soon after the attack Lígia considers testifying to the police, but she envisions running up against the same willful blindness evident in the “branco sai, preto fica” incident. In her mind, “Ninguém dava atenção … à mulher preta e jovem. A mulher então passava da condição de vítima à de causadora do evento, preta oferecida, qualquer merda assim” (113). That neither of her white attackers ever faces justice for their crimes reinforces the systemic erasure of Black female experiences and voices, and it underscores amefricanos’ lack of access to the courts and other institutions of citizenship. As Alexander Weheliye puts it, the experiences of Black subjects throughout the world demonstrate that “the pretense of juridical equality rarely abolishes selective legal insouciance or genocidal acts against those who have been touched by racializing assemblages of the flesh” (2014, 88). In a similar assessment of impunity, Starr awaits the impending verdict in the trial of Khalil’s killer with resigned pessimism: “I’ve got a sinking feeling I know it. It’s always the decision” (2017, 373). She observes in another passage that “people like us in situations like this become hashtags, but they rarely get justice” (58). Lígia’s and Starr’s statements reveal a weary consensus that, for communities of color, law enforcement and the justice system simply do not serve them as they should. This is the case because, as Weheliye explains, problems ingrained in the structure and enforcement of the law perpetuate discrimination when asserting “who is deserving of personhood and who is not” (2014, 11). In short, these narrative episodes reveal systemic issues that run much deeper than individual acts of violence and impunity.

Though Lígia’s imagined testimony and Starr’s actual testimony to police are ultimately unsuccessful in securing justice, their narrative portrayals become vicarious acts of testimony, ushering readers into the “alternative juridical spaces” Margaretta Jolly describes (2014, 5). The texts prompt them to assume the position of judge and jury and to validate the testimonies they hear. Writing and reading, then, become symbolic acts of justice to which amefricanas and others turn for recourse when legal systems fail them. And though readers mete out no sentences, their unofficial verdicts represent affective crossings carried out by the act of reading that can reconfigure individual perceptions of race.

Analyzing amefricana characters in US literature, Patricia Hill Collins notes that, in the “quest for the constructed knowledge of an independent voice … some women write themselves free” and others “talk themselves free” (1990, 119). Similarly, Claire Williams explains that writing enables marginalized individuals to “com[e] to terms with traumatic events in the past” and to “reconfigure their identity in the present” (2017, 103). Lígia and Starr both turn to professional help and personal networks to process their painful experiences, but writing is crucial in their process of working through trauma and moving forward in their “journey toward self-definition, self-valuation, and an empowered self” (Collins 1990, 119).¹²

In Lígia’s case, after a period of emotional paralysis triggered by her sexual trauma, she begins moving forward again, and readers witness decades of fruitful struggle and triumph in her life. This added context retextures her victimhood and widens the frame through which readers perceive her, so that the reading experience goes beyond “the entanglements of terror and enjoyment” (Hartman 1997, 23) and engages with the narrator’s subsequent struggles and successes. As she explains, “Aqueles escrotos me violaram o corpo e a alma naquele dia. Parte de mim ficou no chão seco do cerrado. Mas ainda estou aqui. E decidi não mais dar aos monstros o poder de me roubarem o gosto pela vida” (2018, 170). The short sentences in this sequence read like proclamations, in which Lígia communicates the crushing effect of the trauma she suffered and then insists on her resilience and ultimate refusal to capitulate. The words “não mais” (an echo of the “Não mais” she uses a few pages earlier when discussing the high numbers of Black deaths in Brazil) also reveal the gradual process of development in Lígia’s life. Though by the time she writes the novel Lígia has progressed, this phrase suggests that she did not always think or behave in this way. Paralyzed and unable to resist her attackers’ assault, Lígia eventually regains agency through writing, processing her pain to the extent possible and plodding on, until “[a] ferida ainda dói, mas já não sangra” (170).

Rewriting Symbolic Violence: Controlling Images and Self-Definition

Collins explains that Black women have long been reduced to “controlling images” in the imagination of US American society—in large part through media portrayals. These images include the mammy, (1990, 72–75); the overly assertive and bossy Black matriarch (74–78); the welfare mother (78); the Black lady, who secures professional positions because of affirmative action rather than competence (80); and the sexually aggressive and promiscuous jezebel (81).¹³ Significantly, none of these stereotypical portrayals (variations of which also appear in Brazilian society) accommodates amefricanas who think and write critically. Several of these controlling images surface in the novels, whether through media portrayals, racist attitudes, insensitive remarks or behavior, or other forms of denigrating Blackness and womanhood. As the novels progress, the characters move from gritting their teeth and enduring this violence to actively challenging it. They sometimes do this by confronting other characters, but (as noted earlier) they do it most consistently through their writing—by framing these episodes to readers in a way that manifests their violence and inaccuracy.

Through their discourse, Lígia and Starr turn the controlling paradigms on their heads and engage in “self-definition” (Collins 1990): creating positive depictions of themselves “in the face of derogated images of Black womanhood” (93). The protagonists’ strategies and reactions to stereotypes and violence vary, but they cohere in their focus on opening up space in their own minds and in the minds of others for new and affirming conceptions of amefricanas. In their enactments of escrevivência, they fuse their perceptions and lived experiences with literary portrayals, thereby reclaiming their status as subjects of rights and charging readers to recognize and respect those rights.

In Por cima do mar, for example, Lígia reconfigures for herself, for fellow amefricana readers, and for others the perception of Black women in American societies. Though she writes the book during her middle age, she includes a notebook entry—entitled “Discurso sobre a invisibilidade”—penned by her 20-year-old self, describing her commute to the UnB campus:

Viajo calada. … Algumas pessoas com cara de universitárias, quase todas brancas, ou quase brancas, olham para mim, mas tenho certeza de que não me veem. Mesmo assim, recolho meu corpo, roupas, mochila. Não me olhem. Não estou aqui. Há apenas um espaço vago, que poderia ser ocupado por uma pessoa. Mas não há ninguém. … [E]ntro [na sala] sem que me notem e me sento no canto mais discreto. Cantos discretos de qualquer cômodo combinam muito com a invisibilidade. Passo todas as aulas pelos cantos, sem me mexer muito. Muito menos falar. Se eu falasse, uma palavra que fosse, destruiria em segundos gerações inteiras erguidas sobre a invisibilidade. Não me dava esse direito. (2018, 36)

Lígia’s description casts whiteness as visible and Blackness as invisible, and at this point she therefore feels bound to silence. The juxtaposition of indicative and imperative verbs—”não me veem” versus “Não me olhem”—is crucial in understanding her self-identity. The indicative (“não me veem”) suggests a condition imposed on her without her consent: she is invisible in the eyes of those who are white (or almost white), except as a hypersexualized object for gratification, as discussed earlier. Turning to the imperative, however (“Não me olhem”), makes it clear she has internalized the illusion of invisibility and is not yet comfortable challenging it.

Embedded in her comments is the notion of double consciousness, articulated by sociologist W. E. B. Du Bois as a “sense of always looking at one’s self through the eyes of others, of measuring one’s soul by the tape of a world that looks on in amused contempt and pity. One ever feels his twoness,—an American, a Negro” (1903). Du Bois points to “the Negro” (man) as the subject of double consciousness, but the contributions of Gonzalez, Evaristo, Collins, and other Black feminists make it clear that gender is a crucial intersecting and compounding factor in Black women’s estimation of themselves and of how society perceives them.

Lígia’s fear of disrupting the status quo by speaking during class evokes generations of silencing and symbolic violence against amefricanas, and though she sees her invisibility for exactly what it is—a product of this long tradition—she does not yet permit herself to transgress the controlling images to which she feels subjected. After class, Lígia takes the bus back to Ceilândia, situated on the margins of the DF: “viajamos, nós os invisíveis, mais de hora e meia na volta para casa” (2018, 36). Her circuitous route home illustrates the intersectionality of her experiences and the spaces in which she circulates—overlapping categories of race, class, gender, and geography combining to make her feel invisible on multiple fronts.

Following young Lígia’s comments on societal invisibility and her own diffident behavior, middle-aged Lígia inserts an addendum that articulates her new worldview:

[N]ão me sinto invisível há muito tempo. Ou melhor, não sou. Aliás, nunca fui. Embora muitas pessoas à minha volta teimem em querer me provar que uma pessoa negra e de família pobre, mesmo bem-sucedida como me julgam alguns, tenha que viver na sombra. Ora, uma pessoa negra jamais seria invisível no Brasil: todo o tempo ela é lembrada que tem uma cor. E mesmo que sejamos muitos, e somos, eles insistem há séculos em fingir que não existimos. Ou que existimos apenas para lhes servir. Não. (37–38)

In the narrative, the comments of self-effacing Lígia and emergent Lígia are juxtaposed in the space of just a few pages, dramatically showing readers the contrast in her thought process over time. Twenty-year-old Lígia doubts herself, but in time she recognizes the importance of confronting historical racism and violence against Afro-Brazilians and of asserting her place in society. Lígia’s process of self-definition is protracted, occurring over the course of many years even as the novel jumps around in its chronology. Notwithstanding, the positioning of these passages in the text (mature Lígia’s perspective coming just a few paragraphs after young Lígia’s perspective) gives her writing a sense of immediacy that challenges symbolic violence almost as soon as it appears. The nonlinearity of the narrative is significant since, in addition to reflecting the haphazard process of remembering, it allows Lígia to juxtapose different experiences and attitudes, guiding readers through the text and enabling her to address her life thematically rather than strictly chronologically. The emphatic one-word sentence at the end of this passage (“Não.”) reflects her new posture and denounces the controlling images so prevalent in her society. Once again, by its nonlinear structure the narrative counteracts the tendency toward making Black suffering a spectacle (Hartman), since it immediately countervails depictions of violence and subjugation with portrayals of Black subjectivity and self-definition.¹⁴

Showcasing and Problematizing Offensive Behaviors

Another example of perceived invisibility comes when Lígia helps her one-time friend Virgínia get home, after the latter drinks too much at a party. The next morning, Virgínia introduces her to Rita, a young Black woman employed by her family as a domestic worker: “Vita, essa é a Rita. Rita, essa é a Vita, aquela amiga de infância que me lembra você” (2018, 158). Virgínia’s insistence on calling the narrator Vita (a name she stopped using at age nine, in an act that signals a change in subjectivity), as well as her association of Lígia with working-class positions, enacts symbolic violence and signals Virgínia’s lack of connection to and respect for the protagonist. Her mental association of Rita and Vita also suggests a continued perception of Vita/Lígia as subaltern, even though the protagonist no longer sees herself as such.¹⁵

Upon hearing her old name, Lígia muses, “Vita rima com Rita. Pensei, mas não falei” (158). Her mental rhyming approximates the two amefricanas and reminds readers that though the protagonist improves her social situation through education and writing/speaking, her trajectory is rare for marginalized Black women. (Similarly, Starr explains that in her white boyfriend’s house she tries to “forget that he has an entire floor as big as my house and hired help that looks like me” [2017, 80].) Though these are ostensibly nonviolent interchanges, both protagonists feel the discomfort of recognizing themselves in those who work in the big house but do not reside in it. In essence, in these moments Lígia and Starr undergo affective crossings with fellow amefricanas, connecting with those who occupy the role of hired help—a process that reminds them (and readers) of the ongoing legacy of slavery and racial injustice in their societies.

Soon after the exchange with Rita, Virgínia identifies Lígia for her mother, who had initially not recognized her: “Não sei se ela me achou mais feia ou mais bonita, mais velha ou mais nova, mais gorda ou mais magra do que imaginava. Deve ter me achado mais preta” (2018, 158). Lígia’s doubly conscious projection of Dona Laura’s thoughts is borne out by the questions that follow, the most salient of which is

aquela clássica, sobre como eu tinha conseguido entrar na UnB. Respondi devagar, explicando cada passo que tive que dar para entrar na UnB, aos 20 anos, depois de ter estudado a vida toda em escolas públicas da periferia. Enquanto respondia, percebi que dona Laura fazia movimentos com a cabeça, ora para cima e para baixo, concordando comigo, ora olhando para Virgínia, como se perguntasse: se até a Vita conseguiu, por que você não consegue? (159–60)

Dona Laura’s question itself is an act of violence exposing structural disenfranchisement in Brazilian society, under which those from the periphery are, as a rule, considered unsuited for study at prestigious public universities. Lígia’s admission into UnB breaks with this cycle of exclusion and causes surprise and consternation in Dona Laura. Their interchange also raises the specter of the controlling image of the “Black lady” who benefits from affirmative action policies independent of personal merit. According to this logic, Lígia only succeeds in gaining admittance to UnB because of racial quotas instituted in the early 2000s.¹⁶ However, Lígia’s subsequent international circulation, advanced degrees, and sustained employment at UnB dispel any notions that she is intellectually inferior to her white counterparts. In her narration, Lígia rejects intimations that amefricanas must be subservient to other groups in society, and her intricate narrative itself upsets common conceptions held by those who, like Dona Laura, question amefricanas’ ability to do rigorous intellectual work.

Navigating Society and Personal Identity through Code-Switching

Despite their ultimate affirmations of Blackness, neither narrator is immune to societal pressure to prioritize whiteness in appearance (e.g., hairstyles) and discourse.¹⁷ While 20–year-old Lígia feels unable to speak at all in her university courses, Starr uses carefully calculated code-switching at Williamson High School, avoiding the slang that makes her white classmates “cool” but “makes her ‘hood’” (2017, 70). She “holds her tongue when people piss her off so nobody will think she’s the ‘angry black girl.’ Williamson Starr is approachable. … Williamson Starr is nonconfrontational. … I can’t stand myself for doing it, but I do it anyway” (71). Though this approach requires Starr to repress parts of her identity, she is painfully aware of the controlling images that exist in society and initially seeks to distance herself from them, attempting to maintain as much social capital as possible.¹⁸

Starr’s use of code-switching is not unique among Black US Americans—as Deric Greene and Felicia Walker explain, “Black English” has long “been deemed inferior,” and though code-switching can create troubling “cognitive dissonance,” it enables Black individuals “to manage in a society in which they are the racial minority” (2004, 435–6). Starr clearly understands the strategic value of code-switching and how it reinforces or undermines the controlling images of Black Americans. When questioned by the police about Khalil’s death, she momentarily slips into her habitual register but quickly emends it: “‘Nah.’ / Dammit. Proper English. / I sit up straight. ‘I mean, no ma’am’” (2017, 97). She knows that deviating from “Proper English” may weaken her testimony in the eyes of the police and therefore suppresses expressions and phrases identifiable as Black English. For much of the novel Starr waffles between “which Starr [she] should be,” but by the end she rejects pressure to hide her origins and experiences: “Nah. Fuck that. / ‘Maybe I was ashamed,’ I admit. ‘But I’m not anymore’” (441). The use of “Nah” (a hallmark of Black English), the clipped phrasing, and the expletive all communicate the finality and resoluteness of Starr’s decision to no longer suppress her natural expressions and behaviors—a posture both defiant and affirming.

Weaponizing Discourse against Stereotypes

As the narrative progresses, Starr learns to view her voice as a weapon she can use to lay out and contest racist ideologies. Perhaps the most dramatic example of this is her narration of a televised interview, whose audience is both the public within the narrative and the readers outside it. Her comments reflect a mature and self-assured perspective on the questions at hand, simultaneously recognizing that police brutality is a systemic issue while acknowledging individual exceptions: “I know not all cops are bad. And they risk their lives, you know? … But I’m tired of them assuming. Especially when it comes to black people. … This all happened because [the officer] … assumed that we were up to no good. Because we’re black and because of where we live. … His assumption killed Khalil. It could’ve killed me” (2017, 288). Her comments once again point to the intersection of race, geography, and social class, pushing back against the prevalent images of Black Americans that Starr finds so damaging. Her repetition of various forms of the word “assume” also challenges readers’ own suppositions (especially those of non-Black readers), suggesting that their views may be based on incomplete information and exposing the role uninformed assumptions play in constructing attitudes that affect the lived experiences of amefricanas and amefricanos.

Starr’s forceful remarks during the interview become intensified for readers in her narration of it—she describes the interview as one would a sparring match, in which each answer corresponds to a strategic blow:

“I don’t understand how everyone can make it seem like it’s okay he got killed if he was a drug dealer and a gangbanger.”

A hook straight to the jaw.

…

“[The media] always talk about what he may have said, what he may have done, what he may not have done. I didn’t know a dead person could be charged in his own murder, you know?”

The moment I say it, I know it’s my jab to the mouth.

…

“[One-Fifteen’s] assumption killed Khalil. It could’ve killed me.”

A kick straight to the ribs.

“If Officer Cruise were sitting here,” Mrs. Carey says, “what would you say to him?”

… [T]his interview is the way I fight. … So I throw one more blow, right at One-Fifteen.

“I’d ask him if he wished he shot me too.” (288–89)

Starr uses carefully calculated shots designed to transcend space and prick the hearts of both television viewers and (through her narrative recreation of the interview) her readers, regardless of their racial identities. Her responses address problematic attitudes surrounding the death of Khalil, who until this point is just one more in a seemingly endless series of names and similar cases that flash across a television screen to no effect. Starr reaches viewers and readers not by alleging Khalil’s saintliness but by affirming her friend’s humanity and his right to have rights despite a checkered past: “I’m not saying he was an angel or anything, but he wasn’t a bad person. … He was a kid” (286). In addition to presenting Khalil as a citizen deserving of rights, Starr indicts those police officers who make assumptions about Black people and highlights the systemic bias and violence that pervade police institutions throughout the country, disproportionately targeting Black US Americans. By extension, she calls on readers to reexamine the conclusions they form about amefricanos in their societies and about systemic problems in their institutions, thereby challenging the culturally constructed “global color line … that clearly distinguishes the good/life/fully-human from the bad/death/non-quite-human” (Weheliye 2014, 27).

Starr’s account of the interview helps readers view her comments for what they are: tactics used to challenge racist attitudes and affirm the right of amefricanos to fair treatment in society. The last statement in this passage (“I’d ask him if he wished he shot me too”) appears at the end of the chapter. This endows the linguistic blow with added force and imposes a mandatory reflection period—however brief—on readers, who hear her question echoing as they turn the page to begin the next chapter. In this space between chapters, readers can reflect on their own attitudes and consider the extent to which they align or conflict with Starr’s.

Another way Starr uses her voice to counteract the negative messages circulating in and around Garden Heights is to mimic the techniques adopted by the media. When news outlets use Khalil’s name, they regularly append the epithet “Suspected Drug Dealer” (2017, 104), flattening his humanity and creating emotional and social distance between him and viewers. Adopting a similar approach, in her conversations with others and during the televised interview, Starr insists on calling the officer who killed Khalil by his badge number: “One-Fifteen.” This choice represents at once a refusal to humanize her friend’s killer (in much the same way the police and media outlets dehumanize Khalil) and a symbolic elevation of police brutality to the level of systemic issue, rather than casting it as an isolated problem that can be pinned on a few bad apples. In addition to her comments in the interview about not all police officers being bad, throughout the novel Starr characterizes her Uncle Carlos (who acts as a second father to her, especially during her biological father’s imprisonment) as a police officer and an honorable man. Uncle Carlos represents a counterbalancing figure that undermines blanket statements about police and demonstrates that Starr understands the complexities surrounding issues of race, racial injustice, and policing. This facilitates affective crossings between readers and Starr, since it demonstrates her ability to think in a nuanced manner, thereby humanizing her.¹⁹ In these passages, Starr fuses her spoken words with her written voice (via narrative descriptions) to engage in self-definition, affirming her right to a place in society.

Lígia and Starr are aided by communities of support consisting largely of Black women and men, as they learn to write and talk themselves free (Collins 1990, 119). These communities enable them to identify symbolic violence and resist it, crafting positive and self-assured images of Black women in the Americas. Conceição Evaristo’s estimation of Afro-Brazilian women writers holds true for both narrators: “Investindo contra várias formas de silenciamento, as mulheres negras continuam buscando se fazerem ouvir na sociedade brasileira, conservadora de um imaginário contra o negro” (2020, 222). Lígia and Starr make themselves heard by sharing their life stories with readers. As briefly discussed earlier, when life stories are used as human rights stories,

testimony merges with other aesthetic forms to take the audience far beyond the courtroom. Dramatic art, photography, and creative writing, in other words, open up forms of witnessing that create alternative juridical spaces, rendering judgments without issuing punishments. And in these more complex genres and arenas, they can also do what legal and campaign testimony often cannot, in acknowledging the moral complexities of human rights abuse. (Jolly 2014, 5)

Regardless of readers’ own racial identities, Starr and Lígia usher them into these “alternative juridical spaces” (Jolly) and urge them “to not lose sight of what remains outside the law, what the law cannot capture” (Weheliye 2014, 81). In short, the narratives invite readers to see Starr, Lígia, and others as people rather than simply as legal subjects. They push readers to pass judgment on characters—and on themselves—by assessing anti-amefricana violence that too often goes unacknowledged and unpunished. The narrative retellings of the narrators’ lives, then, become opportunities to partially right the wrongs described. They also communicate to readers the fallibility and humanity of protagonists and other community members, thereby reinforcing the strands of identification—even if only partial—between readers and characters, many times crossing racial lines in the process. In doing so, the narratives simultaneously affirm Black readers in their various identities and broaden non-Black readers’ perspectives—they expand their moral imaginations to more consistently conceive of amefricanas as subjects of rights, and the texts themselves thereby become “projects of community building, organizational tools, and calls to action” (Schaffer and Smith 2004, 8).

Final Thoughts

In proposing her concept of asymmetrical reciprocity, Iris Marion Young emphasizes the importance of embracing “moral humility” in recognizing the nontransferable particularity of another’s life and perspective. As readers (independent of racial or gender identity) encounter Lígia’s and Starr’s accounts, they must “wai[t] to learn by listening to the other person to what extent they have similar experiences” (1997, 350). As Young explains, this requires others to have and use their voices. The first-person narration in Por cima do mar and The Hate U Give is therefore crucial, since it allows each protagonist to express herself directly and permits readers to hear voices that have historically been silenced. The narratives use dialogue to present contrasting views of Black Americans, they appeal to a sense of common humanity, and they show how Black characters assert subjectivity despite the structural racism and attendant violence they encounter.

In words that prefigure Hartman’s cautions against the dangers of portraying “scenes of subjection” (1997), Collins discusses literary representations of Black women in the United States. Collins suggests that though these women do face “intersecting oppressions,” any portrayal that casts them only as victims

stifles notions that Black women can actively work to change our circumstances and bring about changes in our lives. Similarly, presenting African-American women solely as heroic figures who easily engage in resisting oppression on all fronts minimizes the very real costs of oppression and can foster the perception that Black women need no help because we can “take it.” (1990, 287)

The same principles apply beyond the United States to amefricanas in general: characterizing them only as victimized figures or only as impervious survivors reinforces problematic notions of Black female subjectivity. Dornellas’s and Thomas’s novels carefully walk the line between these two extremes, showing how violence and oppression affect protagonists while also chronicling their development into “emergent Black women carving out new definitions of Black womanhood” (Collins 1990, 95). At the same time, the narratives spotlight protagonists’ shortcomings and missed opportunities. The amefricanas in these novels are fallible, but they are human and dignified in their imperfection and therefore become relatable to readers. In this way, the texts educate readers and propose an undoing of the ideas of otherness that racism engenders. They repeatedly provide readers, regardless of their own racial identities, with opportunities to connect with Black characters without negating what distinguishes them from one another.

In short, readers undergo a formative process that parallels the development of the protagonists. This process can be difficult, because narrators’ descriptions of the violent manifestations of structural racism challenge readers to reflect on their own participation in it, whether active or passive. Nevertheless, engaging with these amefricana narrators moves readers into a space of openness, in which they can acknowledge class, gender, racial, or other differences between themselves and the characters and therefore connect with them as equals, rather than in condescending ways. Thus, Lígia’s and Starr’s narratives reframe readers’ moral imaginations by showing them examples of emergent Black women whose behaviors and reasoning deconstruct stereotypes. The novels are particularly effective in generating space for dialogue between non-Black readers and, as Starr puts it, “everybody who looks like us, feels like us, and is experiencing this pain with us” (2017, 171).

Validation of amefricana experience and writing is gaining traction at a societal level, as the success of these novels attests.²⁰ Though the increased prominence of Black women in film and literature is fairly recent, “such women have long populated everyday lived experience” (Collins 1990, 96). Indeed, the novels analyzed here fit within an ever-expanding corpus of contemporary texts (and rediscovered texts from previous centuries) that portray Black female independence and resistance throughout the history of the Americas. As authors and characters of color raise their voices to reclaim rights and define themselves, readers (especially non-Black readers) expand their notions of citizenship and human rights, learning how to listen more humbly to those who speak from “modernity’s disavowed spaces” and experiences (Slaughter 2007, 28). The result of this focus on “Black female self-definition” is a validation of “Black women’s power as human subjects” (Collins 1990, 114) and an expansion of readers’ imaginations to encompass more sophisticated images of Black women throughout the Americas. In this process, readers recognize that Black women may be just like them in important ways, and that in other ways they may be very different. This realization allows them to adopt the moral humility Young advocates, enabling them to listen more intently to the narratives and life experiences being shared, and to revise and expand their moral imaginations in meaningful ways.