Against the grain: black women in the alternative press - from visibility to vocality.

Jornal “Nós, mulheres” – mulheres negras na imprensa alternativa; da visibilidade à vocalidade

Abstract

In the newspapers of São Paulo's black press in the early decades of the 20th century, black women were one of the "main subjects" of the columnists, mostly black men who sought to assert themselves in bourgeois, class-based society. In this sense, these women appeared, or rather, "were represented" - as mothers, wives, daughters, sisters - who paradoxically, while being the target of male protection, indirectly featured as women who sustained households, challenged the status quo, by engaging in condemnable behaviors: going out at night, dancing, dating whomever they pleased, wearing excessive makeup. However, by the end of the same century (20th), now at a different level of organization, within black movements and other movements (women's, workers', mothers', etc.), we observe a transformation in the role played by black women. In this article, we will compare the expressions of "Afrodiasporic feminisms" visible in the pages of São Paulo's black press (from the early 20th century) to the actual presence of black women who wrote in newspapers like "Nós Mulheres" (1976-1978), which sought to reshape the scope of the feminist agenda, addressing the necessary condition of racialized women, notably black women, many of them anonymous, who contributed to the reshaping of the feminist agenda in Brazil.