Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

Beyond the Bedrooms

2023; University of Wisconsin Press; Volume: 59; Issue: 2 Linguagem: Inglês

10.3368/lbr.59.2.56

1548-9957

Ana Cláudia São Bernardo,

Caribbean history, culture, and politics

In 2015 , Louva Deusas, a feminist collective of black Brazilian woman writers, released their second anthology of erotic poetry , Além dos quartos: coletânea erótica negra Louva Deusas. This article investigates Louva Deusas’ use of eroticism to challenge conservatism and the constraints imposed on black women’s bodies and sexuality. The collective uses independent literature to represent these constraints, particularly through Carolina Maria de Jesus’s metaphor of the quarto de despejo while imagining a beyond to this space. As sexuality itself , Além dos quartos enacts political engagement in relation to the changes that took place toward the end of the Worker’s Party government. I analyze Louva Deusas’ efforts to blacken sexuality as well as their publication’s use of transnational black feminist theory. This article also shows how new generations of black women authors are benefiting from Miriam Alves’s pioneering work in representing black female sexuality .