NOSSA VOZ: O BRADO CONTRA A OPRESSÃO NA POESIA DE NOÉMIA DE SOUSA

Abstract

Noémia de Sousa (1926-2002) was born in Mozambique and she experienced the hardships of a dark time such as colonial oppression, and political persecution. The poet attended school during a time when black and non-assimilated people faced numerous obstacles to accessing formal education. Noémia de Sousa, between 1948 and 1951, composed poems that were compiled in 2001 in the book Sangue Negro. According to Manuel Ferreira (1977), Noémia de Sousa is the mother of Mozambican poets, and her poetry paved the way for the glorification of African values, and it brings hope as well. In this sense, this article aimed to analyze a set of poems taken from Sangue Negro, verifying to what extent a collective subject emerges in the compositions that denounces, and rebels against colonial oppression. The poems “Nossa Voz”, “Súplica”, “Justificação”, “Porquê”, “Patrão” and “Poema de João” were read and analyzed. Our analytical trajectory was guided by the understanding of the work as a monument – endowed with beauty and capable of producing an aesthetic experience – and as a document – that bears the marks of a given era. About this last aspect, the formulations of Frantz Fanon (1961), Ana Mafalda Leite (2012), Theodor Adorno (2003), and Eduardo Mondlane (1976), and other texts by historians were of great value. The results demonstrated that the construction of Mozambican identity is influenced by historical processes that surround the formation of the African country, including Portuguese colonization and armed resistance in the 60s and 70s. Therefore, Noémia de Sousa's poetry maps the initial phase that constitutes the process of Mozambique's independence. Thusly, her poetry can be considered one of the stimuli for the birth of Mozambican resistance.