Abstract
This study proposes a reading of the novel-essay Esse cabelo, by Angolan writer Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida. More specifically, we intend to demonstrate that the afro hair of Mila, the character-narrator of the work, can be understood as an arena of a dispute of identity issues that involves continuous tensioning and transit between the fixed poles of the colonizer and the colonized. To this end, some theoretical conceptions concerning blackness and racism proposed by names such as bell hooks (2019), Claudia Rankine (2021), Frantz Fanon (2020), Grada Kilomba (2019), and Ingrid Banks (2000) will be discussed, as well as reflections about the feminine developed by thinkers such as Lucía Guerra (1995), Rita Laura Segato (2014) and Sherry Ortner (1979).
Keywords:
Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida; afro hair; black feminism; diasporic identities