THE BLACK REPRESENTATION IN CUTI´S CONTEMPORARY AFRO-BRAZILIAN POETRY

Abstract

Afro-Brazilian poetry arises when the Afro-descendants take over the position of subjects of enunciation. In taking possession of the word, the African descendants reveal a "black existence" in their way of seeing and feeling the world, through a black-self-enunciator-who-desires-him/herself-as-a-black and that challenges the values represented by the dominant culture, besides showing the aspects of society not revealed by the canonical writings. In these writings, also called contraliteratura, for promoting the rupture with the writing dictated by whites, the poets do not speak on behalf of themselves. From this perspective, the writer is the spokesperson for his/her ethnicity and therefore affirms his/her status as a black person. At the same time the poets seek an identity to represent themselves in their poetry, being that the search for a black identity is the fundamental characteristic of Afro-Brazilian poetry. Cuti(2011) is among those Afro-Brazilian poets whose poetry will be the object of study in this article, in the sense of understanding how he builds the black identity in his writings. To reach this goal we will identify the elements that the poet uses to construct this identity. Also we will verify the procedures adopted by this writer to affirm the black identity and later we will analyze the resources used by the author to fight the stereotypes attributed to the black by the white.