30 phrases by Conceição Evaristo that bring great reflections

My writing is contaminated by the condition of a black woman.

A deep passion is the buoy that emerges from me. I know that the mystery subsists beyond the waters.

From the blackness of my oceans, pain submerges revisited, skinning my skin that rises in suns and moons that are marked by a time that is here.

My text is a place where women feel at home.

I have said and I like to say that my history is a dangerous history, as is the history of those who leave the popular classes, from a subalternity, and manage to climb other spaces.

The exception only serves to confirm the rule. And what are these social and racial rules within Brazilian society that, for some, overcome certain barriers, it is very easy?

What books hide, spoken words set free.

I also like to say that writing is for me the dance-singing movement that my body has not performed, it is the password by which I access the world.

The sea roams undulating beneath my thoughts. Wild memory throws the helm: remembering is necessary.

My great-grandmother’s voice echoed as a child in the ship’s holds.

My mother’s voice echoed in a low revolt in the back of other people’s kitchens, under the bundles, dirty white clothes, along the dusty path towards the favela.

In my daughter’s voice, the echo of life-freedom will be heard.

Vague desires insinuate hopes.

The banzo is reborn in me.

And we ask that stray bullets lose their way and don’t make our bodies, our children, the target.

Our poems conjure and scream.

I chew myself and find the heart of my own fruit, an enticed kernel, to clog the voids in my fingers.

The night does not fall asleep in women’s eyes, there are more eyes than sleep where suspended tears comma the lapse of our wet memories.

When my feet slow down in gear, please don’t force me.

Today, the writing of black women does not have this function of putting Casa Grande to sleep. On the contrary, it is a writing that disturbs, that disturbs.

That these young people take ownership of what the Brazilian state can offer them, because what the Brazilian state is offering so far is not a prize, it is an obligation, all of us.

The wrinkles on the face of the old man are letters, words written in the flesh, the alphabet of living.

In the face of the young, the freshness of the skin and the brightness of the eyes are doubts.

When I bite the word, please don’t rush me, I want to chew, tear between my teeth, the skin, the bones, the marrow of the verb, in order to verse the heart of things.

I was not born surrounded by books, but surrounded by words.

I don’t like the term intolerance, I see it as a difficulty in living with the other, but I prefer to believe that cruelty is not innate, but acquired.

I saw only tears and tears. However, she was smiling happily. But there were so many tears, I wondered if my mother had eyes or rivers rushing over her face.

If it’s right, I want to run.

My mother’s eye color was the color of water eyes. Mother Oxum Waters! Calm rivers, but deep and deceptive for those who contemplate life only on the surface. Yes, waters from Mama Oxum.