Weaving words with (un)threads, resiliences and resistances: reflections of a black woman and academic teacher

Abstract

This is a writing exercise in which I sought, sometimes through self-narrative, sometimes through reading the Brazilian sociopolitical scenario, to promote a reflection on my process of mental decolonization, started in the Youth and Adult Education classroom. In Salvador-Bahia, the blackest city outside Africa. I am currently an academic teacher, a space still little accessed by the black bodies of both students and teachers, despite the advances that come from affirmative action policies. My text dialogues with authors, such as Carolina Maria de Jesus, Lélia González, Gloria Anzaldúa and Conceição Evaristo, women who helped me in the weaving of words, in the cartography of my memories and in my subjective rescue as a form of empowerment. Besides these women, other voices are present here and can help us to reflect on the educational inequalities, in their intersections of gender, race and social class, still present in our daily lives, even after 131 years of abolition of slavery.