Maria Firmina dos Reis
Maria Firmina dos Reis (October 11, 1825:– November 11, 1917) was a Brazilian abolitionist and author. Her novel Úrsula (1859) was a depiction of life for Afro-Brazilians under slavery.
Contents
- 1 Life and work
- 2 Tribute
- 3 Bibliography
- 3.1 By Maria Firmina dos Reis
- 3.2 English translations
- 3.3 Selected further reading
- 4 Notes
- 5 External links
Life and work
Maria Firmina dos Reis was born in São Luís, Maranhão, Brazil. "At age five, her mother and relatives moved to Viamão where she attended school. In 1847, due to outstanding performance, she won a scholarship for further studies at the level of 'cadeira de primeiras letras' that prepared her to be a teacher." She maintained the profession ″until her retirement in 1881″. "At the age of fifty-five, she founded a school for poor children."
In 1859, Firmina dos Reis published her single major novel Úrsula (the same year, Harriet Wilson published her Our Nig).
″Úrsula, the main character, is a weak and sweet girl with whom two men are in love: one is a good person, the other a villain. Úrsula is expected to fall in love with the good man. However, she falls for the villain and becomes a victim of his cruelty. She is condemned and mistreated for having made the wrong choice. Reis shows through her characters that whenever women and slaves deviate from the established rules of the patriarchal system or refuse to accept the rules of society, they are punished. Furthermore, Úrsula, her mother, and some female slaves are portrayed from an inside perspective, showing a truthful historical point of view from Colonial Brazil.″Besides Úrsula, "Firmina dos Reis wrote poetry and short stories. While still in her twenties she began to collaborate with several local newspapers in her hometown of São Luis, an activity she sustained for many years. It was the only opening available for getting her works published.″ She also "wrote an intimate, melancholic diary written dating from 1853 to 1903 in which the themes of regilious self-denial, death, and suicide recur". In 1975 by the Brazilian scholars Antônio de Oliveira and Nascimento Morais Filho recovered the long forgotten Úrsula 1975 in a facsimile edition.
As a "privileged free black woman within nineteenth-century colonial slave society″, Maria Firmina dos Reis ″stands out because she was very well-educated and a vigorous opponent of slavery". Dawn Duke considers Maria Firmina dos Reis, together with Cuban writer María Dámasa Jova Baró, "as eminent precursors to a distinguished line of subsequent women writers" in the Afro-Latin American context. "Horácio de Almeida believed Maria Firmina dos Reis to be the first Brazilian woman writer. Luiza Lobo has since opposed the allegation by presenting Ana Eurídice Eufrosina de Barandas of Porto Alegre as the first female Brazilian novelist." But the "long-term symbolic value of Maria Firmina dos Reis's only novel Úrsula (1859) rests in its distinction as a work that lays the foundations for an Afro-Brazilian female literary consciousness." For Rita Terezinha Schmidt, "Maria Firmina dos Reis inscribes a black voice in the construction of national subjectivities engendering what Homi Bhabha defines as a counter narrative of the nation that 'continually evoke and erase its totalizing boundaries:– both actual and conceptual:– disturb those ideological maneuvers through which "imagined communities" are given essentialist iden*ies'".
In her Ph.D thesis Life Among the Living Dead, Carolyn Kendrick-Alcantara (2007) *yzes "the Gothic as a powerful abolitionist discourse in Brazil and Cuba through readings of Maria Firmina dos Reis′ Ursula and Gertrudis Gomez de Avellaneda y Arteaga′s Sab".
Tribute
On October 11, 2019, Google celebrated her 194th birthday with a Google Doodle.
On June 9, 2021, Google announced on their Google Cloud blog that they will name a new undersea cable that is being constructed between Brazil and the United States after her.
Bibliography
By Maria Firmina dos Reis
- Ursula, "Romance original brasileiro, por Uma Maranhense". São Luís: Typographia Progresso, 1859. 199 pages.
- Facsimile: Maranhão: Governo do Estado; 2nd edition, 1975, with a foreword by Horácio de Almeida. OCLC:2403003
- Reprint: Rio de Janeiro: Presença; Brasília: INL, 1988; with an introduction by Charles Martin, updated and annotated by Luiza Lobo, Coleção Resgate. ISBN:8525200352
- Gupeva, “romance brasileiro indianista”. Published in O jardim dos Maranhenses, 1861/62.
- A Escrava. Story published in A Revista Maranhense, nr. 3, 1887.
- Cantos à beira-mar. Poetry. São Luís do Maranhão: Typographia do Paiz. Reprint by “M.F.V. Pires”, 1871. OCLC:420181658
- 2nd edition, facsimile, by José Nascimento Morais Filho: Rio de Janeiro: Granada, 1976. OCLC:494335967
- Hino da libertação dos escravos. 1888.
- Maria Firmina dos Reis is included in the poetry anthology Parnaso maranhense: collecção de poesias, edited by Flávio Reimar and Antonio Marques Rodrigues. OCLC:492474114
- She published poems in the following literary journals: Federalista; Pacotilha; Diário do Maranhão; A Revista Maranhense; O País; O Domingo; Porto Livre; O Jardim dos Maranhenses; Semanário Maranhense; Eco da Juventude; Almanaque de Lembranças Brasileiras; A Verdadeira Marmota; Publicador Maranhense; y A Imprensa.
English translations
- Ursula. Trans. and Introduction by Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey. Dartmouth, MA: Tagus P, 2021.
- “The Slave Woman.” Trans. and Introduction by Cristina Ferreira Pinto-Bailey. Afro-Hispanic Review. 32. 1 (Spring 2013): 209-18.
Selected further reading
- Alzira Rufino; Nilza Iraci; Maria Rosa Pereira. A mulher negra tem história. Santos, SP: Coletivo de Mulheres Negras da Baixada Santista, c. 1986. OCLC:22776073
- Souza Dorea, Alfredo (1995), "Maria Firmina dos Reis, negra memória do Maranhão", Cadernos do Ceas, Salvador da Bahia, ISSN:0102-9711, OCLC:1490971
- Duke, Dawn (2008), "Textual hybridity in Maria Firmina dos Reis's ″Úrsula″", Literary P*ion, Ideological Commitment: Toward a Legacy of Afro-Cuban and Afro-Brazilian Women Writers, *ociated University Presses, pp.:59–75, ISBN:978-0838757062, OCLC:185021522
Notes
External links
- Digital editions (in Portuguese)
- Works by or about Maria Firmina dos Reis in libraries (WorldCat catalog)
- Maria Firmina dos Reis at Google Books
- Works by Maria Firmina dos Reis at LibriVox (public domain audiobooks)
- "Author’s Portrait: Maria Firmina dos Reis", Edith's Miscellany, November 26, 2014.