Principles

05/01/2026

To join the Amefrican Women's Biographical Dictionary, it is essential to commit to questioning eurocentric knowledge and reinscribing the history of Amefrican women in all its complexity. In this section, you will learn the fundamental principles, the work methodology, and the specific rules for submitting entries. All the material is designed to strengthen the ethical and political commitment to making silenced stories visible through the practice of escrevivência and rigorous research. 

1. Questioning Narratives The entries question Eurocentric frameworks and reject explanations that reduce the Black experience to "miscegenation," "syncretism," or the idea of "racial democracy".

2. Terreiro Feminisms and Escrevivência Amefrican women have been protagonists of resistance since the colonial period. In these spaces — between homes, quilombos, and African-matrix religions — women created strategies for survival and emancipation, facing racism, patriarchy, and epistemicide.

3. Legal and Political Recognition The writing of the entries is anchored in historical frameworks of struggle that transcend Brazilian borders, connecting with a continental movement of symbolic and cognitive reparation. In the context of the Americas and the Caribbean, this foundation is expanded by analogous legislations such as Law 70 of 1993 (Colombia), the Organic Law of Intercultural Education (Ecuador), Law 19.122 (Uruguay), and the constitutional recognition of Afro-Mexicans (2019).

4. Community and Ancestral Matrix The entries are based on cosmoperceptions that recognize matrifocality, matriopotence, and seniority as organizing principles.

5. Intertwining of Temporalities Writing an entry is to understand that the past and present are intertwined. Therefore, the entries provide a transgenerational perspective, where each concept connects to cultural, political, and spiritual practices of yesterday and now

From Afrodiasporic to Amefrican

The construction of our Dictionary is a living organism that evolves as we deepen our perspective on who we are and the women we want to biograph. Initially conceived through the lens of the "diaspora," the project now proudly assumes the Amefrican identity.

But what does this mean and why is this change fundamental?

The limits of the term "Afro-diasporic" 

For a long time, we used terms such as "Afro-Brazilian" or "Afro-diasporic." Although important, the intellectual Lélia Gonzalez warned us that these terminologies often carry an imported vision, especially from the North American context ("Afro-American"). By defining ourselves only by the diaspora, we risk seeing ourselves solely as "Africans outside of Africa," ignoring the immense and original cultural construction we have built here, on this soil. Furthermore, generic terminologies tend to hide the specificities of our struggle in Latin America, marked by a racism that operates through "denial" — claiming not to be racist while rendering us invisible.

What is Amefricanness? 

To break away from that vision and name our own experience, Lélia Gonzalez coined the concept of Amefricanness (Amefricanidade). It is not just a play on words. It is a political-cultural category that recognizes a unique historical reality:

  • Ladin America: It recognizes that our identity was forged not only by African heritage but also by the resistance of indigenous peoples. We are the fruit of this encounter, often violent, but one that generated new forms of existence.

  • Creative Resistance: To be Amefrican means understanding that we did not just "survive" slavery; we reinvented the world. We created "Pretuguês" (africanizing the colonizer's language), developed new social technologies (the quilombos), and new forms of knowledge.

  • Looking Inward: While the term "Afro-American" often looks toward the Global North, Amefricanness makes us look at our neighbors in South and Central America and the Caribbean, realizing that we share the same struggle against erasure and racial hierarchy.

Why "Dictionary of Amefrican Women"? 

Changing the project's name is an act of positioning. By adopting the term Amefrican, we are asserting that the women biographed in this project — the midwives, the terreiro leaders, the activists, the educators — are the protagonists of a civilization of their own. They are not the "other" of official history; they are the center of a history of resistance that unites Black and Indigenous knowledge.

Recursos sobre Lélia Gonzalez (Referencias Multilingües):

Methodology of Critical Historiographical Fabulation

The Amefrican Women's Biographical Dictionary is a space for memory and resistance. When crafting entries, we do not limit ourselves to repeating official archives, which are often marked by silences, distortions, and absences. Instead, we employ critical historiographical fabulation, a methodology that allows us to interpret the past with rigor and critical creativity to recover meanings erased by official history.

Inspired by thinkers like Saidiya Hartman and Tavia Nyong'o, critical historiographical fabulation is neither fiction nor a simple chronology. It uses traces, clues, and fragments to reconstruct voices, cultural practices, and resistances that were made invisible. Unlike fictional fabulation, its commitment is to historical truth and the ethics of representation, filling the voids left by documents.

This approach articulates with:

  • Escrevivência (Conceição Evaristo): A writing of the self and the collective, where narrating is an act of resisting, denouncing, and affirming our existence.

  • Oral History: Interviews, testimonies, and accounts that place Black women as the protagonists of their own narratives.

  • Oralitura: The power of oral tradition transmitted through songs, griots, prayers, myths, and community experiences.

  • Primary and Secondary Sources: Public documents, diaries, letters, institutional archives, and the living heritage of community memory.

Data Collection Techniques

Authors may use various research paths, such as:

  • Public archives and community collections (civil registries, old newspapers, museums, religious brotherhoods, and quilombola associations).

  • Interviews with family members, neighbors, and community members.

  • Publications in blogs, community newspapers, and social media.

  • Documents from social movements and Black women's organizations.

  • Oral narratives and memories from griots and community leaders.

Each entry must include a brief methodological report explaining the research process and the strategies used to confirm information. Ethical care is paramount; for any interview, a signed Free and Informed Consent Form (ICF) is mandatory to guarantee confidentiality and the right to withdraw at any time.

Biographical Writing

Writing an entry is an ethical and political commitment to making visible stories that official historiography has silenced. Each individual trajectory holds collective echoes of the African diaspora, the fight against racism, and the daily invention of resistance strategies.

Inspired by authors like Angela Davis, whose autobiography shows how personal life and collective struggle intertwine, these entries do not have to follow a linear chronological order. They can be structured around thematic axes revealing moments of resistance, learning, pain, and creation.

The final entry should reflect:

  • The unique trajectory of the subject.

  • The cultural, historical, and political contexts of her life.

  • The methodology used to access and interpret these memories.

  • The collective dimension emerging from her story.

Remember: writing an entry is building a monument of words—a bridge between past and future, and between individual memory and collective history. Please confirm your registration and biographee choice with the organizing team before submission.

Support Materials and Recommended Resources

Biographical Writing Support:

Recommended Readings:

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