Ponciá Vicencio, the debut novel by Afro-Brazilian writer Conceiçáo Evaristo, is the story of a young Afro-Brazilian woman's journey from the home of her enslaved ancestors to the wasteland of contemporary urban life. In the loneliness of the inhospitable city, voices from the past crowd her mind. What is her grandfather's mysterious legacy? Can her family escape from servitude? And can we ever really outrun our past? This mystical story of family, dreams, and hope illuminates urban and rural Afro-Brazilian conditions with poetic eloquence and raw urgency.

BIO

Conceição Evaristo was born in Belo Horizante in the state of Minas Gerais. She is a professor of Brazilian literature at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro (PUR/RJ) and is working on her doctorate in comparative literature. Her work deals with the social factors influencing families, including the power that women exert in their role as mothers and the consequences of society's failure to provide adequately for its youth. Her work has been published in the following anthologies: various issues of Cadernos Negros; Vozes de Mulheres (1991); Schwartze Prose; prosa negra-Afrobrasilianische Erzählungen der Gergenwart (1993); Moving Beyond Boundaries. International Dimension of Black Women Writing (1995); Finally Us. Contemporary Black Brazilian Women Writers (1995); Callaloo, vol. 18 number 4 (1995). Ms. Evaristo is also featured in Fourteen Female Voices From Brazil (Host Publications, 2002).

[P]  Host Publications  /  March 15, 2006

0.41" H x 8.5" L x 6.26" W (0.5 lbs) 135 pages