EP 2 Beatriz Nascimento - Quilombos As Living Blueprints I Women and Resistance 🌍

In this episode of Women and Resistance, Aya Fubara Eneli and Adesoji Iginla delve into the life and times of Beatriz Nascimento, sharing her early experiences as a Black child in Brazil, the influence of her family and education, and her journey into activism and scholarship.

Aya explains the significance of Quilombos as symbols of resistance and the importance of reclaiming Black history and identity. Nascimento emphasises the need for Black voices in academia and the necessity of telling their own stories to combat cultural alienation and erasure.

In addition, they discuss Beatriz's work and insights on the Brazilian Black movement, as well as the significance of the concept of Ori.

Beatriz also encourages listeners to connect with their heritage and find joy in their identity.

Takeaways

*Beatriz Nascimento emphasises the importance of education in overcoming societal barriers.

*The Quilombo represents a historical and contemporary form of Black resistance.

*Family support played a crucial role in her academic and personal development.

*She advocates for a re-examination of Black history beyond slavery narratives.

*The need for Black people to reclaim their stories and identities is paramount.

*Activism is essential for challenging systemic oppression and cultural erasure.

*Her experiences highlight the intersection of race, gender, and class in Brazil.

*History is a foundational tool for liberation and understanding one's identity. 

*The documentary 'Ori' explores the Brazilian Black movement and its connection to Africa.

*The concept of Ori represents one's destiny and the importance of self-empowerment.

*Black Brazilians must reconnect with their history to evolve and assert their humanity.

*The Quilombo symbolises the right to occupy space and assert identity.

*The struggle against systemic racism and sexism impacts mental health, especially for Black women.

*Beatriz advocates for unity and understanding within the Black community.

*The importance of recognising and embracing one's identity as a Black person in Brazil.

Chapters

00:00 Introduction to Beatriz Nascimento
01:17 Beatriz Nascimento's Early Life and Influences
05:18 Experiences of Racial Identity in Childhood
12:48 The Impact of Education and Family Support
18:22 Research and Connection to African Heritage
20:14 The Quilombo: A Symbol of Resistance
29:36 The Role of History in Black Identity
37:25 Activism and the Fight for Black Representation
45:56 Exploring the Brazilian Black Movement
51:34 The Concept of Ori and Its Significance
56:55 Reclaiming Black History and Identity
01:01:27 The Quilombo: A Symbol of Resistance
01:06:51 Living with Purpose and Resilience
01:19:45 Legacy and the Power of Connection

Welcome  to Women and Resistance, a powerful podcast where we honour the courage, resilience, and revolutionary spirit of women across the globe. Hosted by Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla...

You're listening to Women and Resistance with Aya Fubara Eneli Esq and Adesoji Iginla—where we honour the voices of women who have shaped history through courage and defiance...Now, back to the conversation.

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Transcript

Adesoji Iginla (00:04.266)
OK, yes, welcome again to Women and Resistance. And yeah, I am your host, Atesuji Iginla. And with me is a guest from the great land of Brazil. Today, we journey to Brazil to honor one of the most profound thinkers of African diaspora, Beatriz Nascimento. And before we hear from her,

I'm sure you've been coming here for a while now. We would like to announce that we're hoping to get to 2,000 subscribers and if you can assist in that quest, we'll greatly appreciate the effort. But so, back to this evening. We're talking to Beatriz Nascimento. Who is she? What is she being focused on tonight?

you should hear in the course of our chat with her. yes, as they will say, obrigado. Welcome, Ms. Narcimento.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17.171)
Thank you. It's a pleasure to be here with you this evening.

Adesoji Iginla (01:21.868)
Yes, thank you, thank you, thank you for joining us. first things first, tell us a bit about yourself.

Adesoji Iginla (01:43.192)
Don't be shy.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:44.074)
We're, oh, shy and Beatrice don't go in the same sentence at all. Perhaps when I was young, I was born in Surjipay and I was born on July 12th, 1942. And I was the eighth of 10 children.

and the youngest daughter of my parents. My parents were Maria Beatriz Nacimento. Well, no, Maria. Maria was my first name. I'm Maria Beatriz Nacimento. My family would lovingly call me Bia. In many of our families, think that culturally, a lot of us can relate to this that.

you would often have a nickname or a term of endearment. And so I do want to share, I don't know that I'm actually going to play for you guys today, but one of the things that you may not know about me is that I love music dearly. And...

Aya Fubara Eneli (03:08.905)
played all the time. But you know what? We have a lot to cover today. So I'm not going to do that. I played the acoustic guitar. And my father, who was a Mason, he played the bandolini. And my father was Jose de Rosaria. No, sorry. Jose de Rosaria was my husband.

who's the father of my daughter, Bethania, but from whom I divorced. And I later on had a common law husband, as you will. And I will tell you more about that later. But my parents were Rubina de Nacimiento, my mother, who not only cared for all 10 of us, but they were often...

many other cousins and her nieces and nephews that she cared for as well. And my father Francisco, Abia de Nacimento, was a fantastic musician, but of course, could never have seen himself as an artist or that as a way of earning a living. And so for a living, he was a mason, a stonemason.

And in 1949, my parents moved us from our area in Surjipay to Sao Paulo. And the idea was to

Aya Fubara Eneli (04:50.003)
take advantage of more opportunities. There was a lot of movement from what would have been considered the countryside then to the more quote unquote developed industrial areas. When you asked me who am I and I mentioned that shy and my name don't go in the same sentence, that's not entirely true.

One of my experiences as a child, and that continued actually for most of my life as a student anyway, was being in these spaces where I was often just the only black child, a black person, or just one of maybe two. And when we moved, I went to a school

Adesoji Iginla (05:22.382)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (05:46.151)
where I was one of two Black children. The other Black girl there, her name was Jurema.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:00.711)
Jurema is.

a person with whom I came to have a great affinity. But when we were first kids and first met, we both kept our distance from each other. We were in this class and we both had short hair and we were the only two black people, children in that class.

Adesoji Iginla (06:31.31)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (06:31.517)
The school was run by all white women and of course the other children in the school were white. And we got called all kinds of names, little black, Pekingani, of course said in Portuguese. And we were poor, we grew up in what are called the favelas.

Not a lot of resources, many poor families. Similar to what I guess in the United States would now be termed ghetto, even though that term ghetto actually comes from the experiences of the Jews, right? If we know our history, yes. But it's a place where there is not as much opportunity and there is very much lack and poverty.

Adesoji Iginla (07:16.8)
in Europe. Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:28.775)
and just people struggling against the system in a structure that often breaks them. And I was a very bright student. started reading by the time I was four. I always had books. My parents made sure of that. My mother...

Adesoji Iginla (07:37.486)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (07:51.934)
would often say to us, her girls and all her children, you will not be anybody's housekeeper, you will not be anybody's maid. And she didn't just mean that in the sense of how we earn our daily bread, but even in our relationships, that we would never just be in a situation where we had nothing and we had to.

Adesoji Iginla (08:14.762)
Rest of the, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:20.669)
you know, throw ourselves at the mercy of whoever that oppressor tent looked like in that instant. And so I was shy at this school. I was withdrawn, I was quiet, but I was a great student. And when I would often come first in class, definitely being the first three, but a lot of times I'll be first.

Adesoji Iginla (08:31.747)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (08:46.769)
And the teachers just couldn't give me the same, accord me the same honors that the white students would get when they were excelling academically. Jurema, unfortunately, was always last. And Jurema always had this spirit of defiance, of disobedience. And they picked on her a lot. And I did not want to be called Little Negro Picanini. But, you know, there's really no escaping it.

Adesoji Iginla (09:15.736)
Give me the app.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:17.743)
one point one of the girls in the class actually lifted up my skirt.

she said because she needed to figure out if I was a boy or a girl. And they had a name for us, know, women who had short hair and did not have the long flowing hair, Joa. It was this sense of being androgynous.

Aya Fubara Eneli (09:54.291)
Jerema and I.

an incident where

She challenged me to a fight and I was not a fighter in that sense and I was not going to fight but as children I want to do and these young people, these white classmates, they immediately broke into camps, one camp on her side and one on my side and they were just egging on this fight and Jurema wanted us to go outside and take care of it. I think young people still do that. Let's go outside.

And I went and while she was trash talking, I actually got the first blow, if you will, in and I scratched her face and that very much surprised her because I think even she saw me as this non-fighter, this very quiet withdrawn person. And I knew she was going to beat the crap out of me.

Adesoji Iginla (10:59.336)
retaliate yeah yeah

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:02.331)
And just at that time there was a man who said, look at my Negro Pekinganese, my Black Pekinganese. And that broke up the fight and I immediately ran home. before that happened, I had just broken into tears. There was just such pain in my heart that we had been reduced to the very thing that I know I did not want to be to the spectacle of these white people.

Adesoji Iginla (11:27.362)
part of, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (11:34.018)
and

After that, was almost like Dreama had a different perspective of me and she clung to me. She would sit next to me during all of our tests and...

I came to understand how similar our experiences were, although I had the kind of support that she didn't have. I had a father who would tell me how beautiful I was. And most people in my family would say that I was definitely my father's favorite. I was a daddy's girl. And he had an expectation of me and he poured a love into me that many Negro girls did not get. We were.

castigated and denigrated and made to feel inferior. And I came to understand that Jurema's defiance, that sense of always being ready to defend herself and to fight back was really a defense mechanism. And it's crazy how this racial society we live in

creates certain environments and then turns around and points fingers at us for responding to the very environment that they have created. Jerema dropped out of school and I know that you asked me about myself but it is impossible for me as a black woman, as a thinker, as an intellectual, as an activist

Adesoji Iginla (12:59.384)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (13:17.133)
as a screenwriter, as a poet, as a mother, as a lover, as a daughter, not to center my people even in asking and answering the question about who I am because who I am is who they are and vice versa.

Jurema dropped out of school and I did not see her for a while. Her father was what we would call a fishmonger and he often would have this knife in his hand that you use to scale the fish. And one time I saw her and she was slim like me, dark like me, and she was trying to hold up her drunk father. And I saw that knife in her hands.

and Churima would have done anything to protect herself and her father.

Years later, I she was just 14, I saw Jerma.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:21.713)
and was very unkempt and dirty and had, you know, clothes to rags on her body and she was very visibly pregnant.

Aya Fubara Eneli (14:35.313)
And then, and she said to me, continue. Keep studying. Don't let them do to you what they did to me.

And another time I saw her in this time, she was pregnant and she had a baby in her hands. And the first father of her child, the father of her first child had left her. And the man who had impregnated her had also left her. And she was just so broken. Jiruma's brother had also been at that same school. Later I was to find out that...

Adesoji Iginla (15:03.31)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:13.875)
He was arrested and imprisoned and he was supposedly a pothead. I never saw Jurema again.

I don't know if she's still alive, if she's in a favela somewhere. I don't know what became of her children. I don't know if she had more children. I don't know how many more men she had children with. But I do remember her words. Continue. Keep studying. Don't let them do this to you. And continue what I did.

Adesoji Iginla (15:39.682)
continue

Aya Fubara Eneli (15:50.27)
continue I definitely did. In spite of all the challenges, I attended public schools and I developed a love for history and literature. I went on to get my bachelor's degree in history from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro in 1971. I interned at the National Archives

under historian Jose Honorio Rodriguez. And then I went on with my studies. I continued to complete postgraduate studies at Fluminense Federal University. And during my studies, while I was studying for my bachelor's degree,

Aya Fubara Eneli (16:44.305)
I did get pregnant.

and my first two pregnancies I did not allow to continue. But I did allow my third one. And today I have a daughter, Bethania Gomez, who became a principal dancer at the Harlem Dance Theater in New York.

born to me and my then husband Jose Doro Sarrio Gomez, who was also a student. I did not raise my child on my own.

Aya Fubara Eneli (17:27.507)
community very similar to the Quilombos that I would come to study and write about. And mine was a matriarchal family. Rubina ran the roost and made it possible for her children and her husband to thrive. And so my daughter was raised not just by me and my husband at the time.

but also my sisters, my four sisters and my parents. And she just had a whole community which was definitely very helpful during the years where I would travel and do research. Skipping ahead, but maybe not because our lives are cyclical and it's difficult to tell these stories in just the linear fashion.

Adesoji Iginla (18:20.686)
True. True.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:22.345)
And I did travel to Africa on two separate occasions. Angola to be specific. And I went to do research that was funded by the Ford Foundation of all people, of all organizations. But you do what you can. And I went to Angola because when you look at the history of Brazil and the way that we were taken.

Adesoji Iginla (18:37.198)
you

Adesoji Iginla (18:50.744)
traffic.

Aya Fubara Eneli (18:53.917)
both through the actions of the imperialist Europeans, but also the actions of African leaders, chiefs, who maybe at some point thought that there was some benefit to collaborating with these imperialists. When you look at the Quilombos in Brazil,

It was clear to me the African connection and that Angola had been a major area from where we came and you could see some of the similarities. And so I wanted to go to Angola to study Quilombos in Angola. One of my very last visits, trips out of Brazil was actually to Haiti and to Martinique.

all of these areas of course had their own versions of Columbus. We can obviously talk about Jamaica and I believe you have spoken with Nanny of the Maroons. so definitely understanding that there was a Pan-Africanism to not just our resistance but to

Adesoji Iginla (20:01.496)
Correct, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (20:14.345)
how we operated and the ways that we tried to organize ourselves. And one of the things that irked me and continues to irk me to no end is going into the universities, into these white spaces. And when it comes to talking about black people in Brazil, the only conversation, the only focus being on slavery.

as though our whole existence was nothing but subjugated, enslaved people, primitive people, people who needed to be civilized. And one of the reasons I wanted to study the Quilombo was that it gives us an understanding of how we organized and how we created our own systems.

Adesoji Iginla (20:53.848)
dominated.

Adesoji Iginla (21:12.739)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:13.093)
and how we even engendered peace so that we could build ourselves up in terms of our ability to defend ourselves, in terms of our self-sufficiency to grow our food, to raise our children.

And people like to talk about the Quilombos as though, you know, we just ran away from slavery and just landed in a place and then tried to figure it out. But no, it was actually planned. The men would most often go before the women and the children and set up camp and set up a place that would be conducive to growth. And I wanted to do that study.

Adesoji Iginla (21:54.424)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (21:59.742)
But to further answer the question that you posed initially, I'd actually like to read the words of my daughter as she described me because it's one thing to talk about yourself. It's another thing to look at what others have to say about you. And so I'm going to be reading from a book called The Dialectic is in the Sea, The Black Radical Thought of Beatrice Nascimento.

Adesoji Iginla (22:20.43)
galactic indices.

Aya Fubara Eneli (22:29.009)
And as I hold this book in my hands, of course originally written in Portuguese and then translated, I marvel at my mother and whether she ever thought that her child would achieve the things that I did not just for myself, but for my people.

So this is what my daughter Bethany I wrote.

Growing up, the first thing I thought was that she was really, really beautiful. Though people used to tell me I looked so much like my father, I always felt that actually I was just like her. And it was comforting to be like her. She was funny. She was bright. She used to play the acoustic guitar. Some of my first memories are of her playing the guitar and singing, singing, singing.

Aya Fubara Eneli (23:35.334)
singing with my dad or with friends. She made me into a strong girl, a strong woman, without losing my vulnerability or my femininity. And of course, she showed me how to be a woman in all the ways that a woman can be a woman, and a black woman in particular. I remember this bright, funny person, always with a lot of people around her.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:02.387)
you

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:06.577)
I remember being at the beach playing in the sand and I remember my mother coming over and she just picked me up and carried me into the sea and threw me right into the water. No mercy. And I remember wondering why would she do that to me?

I remember thinking it was mean, but then looking at her and she was smiling, this really peaceful smile, standing there and watching me try to swim. And then she joined me in the water and swam with me and calmed me down. This is the type of mother she was. She shaped me to be a warrior from the very beginning.

Aya Fubara Eneli (24:52.189)
Looking back, that was a gift. She taught me how to fight. She taught me how to overcome things that I didn't want to face. I wouldn't say fear exactly, but there are things in life that you have to face and things that you have to overcome every hour, every day. My mother read a lot, played guitar, and there were lots of parties, family parties, parties with friends, and I still love to go to parties. She was a very exciting mom.

Adesoji Iginla (25:18.958)
.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:22.791)
She was a very exciting woman. And I could tell that she was admired and she was loved.

Aya Fubara Eneli (25:35.623)
When my mother and my father separated, our family of three broke apart. I heard she was in a lot of pain, but she used to always say that I was such a supportive daughter and I was very caring. And my mother was supportive of me no matter what. She was warm. Her body was my home.

even if sometimes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:03.997)
This part is hard for me to read, but is the truth, nonetheless. Even if sometimes she seemed to be broken because she had bipolar disorder, I believe you talked with another woman who was also diagnosed with bipolar disorder and who also had a daughter, Nina Simone.

Adesoji Iginla (26:19.95)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (26:29.719)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:33.831)
And when she went through her mental health crisis, it was tough. I could see her brokenness. But even in those moments, it was like when she threw me in the water and I had to just get it together. Our dynamic was really interesting, our body language. was a different kind of motherhood for that time.

Aya Fubara Eneli (26:59.483)
My mother's beauty was something for the books. It was the way she carried herself. There's a picture that I have of her with both of us on the beach and she's wearing a bikini and she's just staring at the camera with this slight smile on her face. Really an elegant smirk on her face. My mother exuded sensuality.

She was beautiful and sexy and she knew it. And what set my mother apart is, because black women are still struggling with this today and perhaps other women as well, is that she could embody everything that she was. She could be this amazing intellectual, which she was, and she could also be this incredibly sexy and sensual human being.

and she did not feel like she had to be less of one than the other. She was enchanting. Absolutely enchanting. My mother got lots of attention from men. In fact, at her funeral, there were lots of men.

all upset. There were men calling from around the world in tears. Calls from Germany, calls from Angola. I was like, whoa, who are all these people? She was popular and she had friends all around the world. But you know what? My mother was the kind of woman who was fiercely protective of women too.

There are some women who lead with their femininity and their sexuality in such a way that when other women become perhaps envious, perhaps a little concerned about their men falling under her spell, she might be standoff, and those women might be standoffish. But my mother showed up for women. In fact, so much so.

Adesoji Iginla (29:15.95)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:20.317)
that it cost her her life.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:25.477)
I will stop there in terms of what my daughter had to say.

Adesoji Iginla (29:32.622)
So.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:33.323)
you had a question.

Adesoji Iginla (29:36.859)
Yes, you're an intellectual, you're a thinker. Why history?

Adesoji Iginla (29:47.16)
could have been any other field of study, history.

Aya Fubara Eneli (29:57.45)
The immediate response that comes to mind is why not? To the extent that so much of who we are defined as as black people is based on this history, this very distorted story about who we are. Why not start there?

and expose the lies and unpack the truth so that we have a clearer and more truthful understanding of our origins, of our contributions, so that we don't allow ourselves to be broken eternally because we do not remember because

We have been written out of history. We have been made invisible. And now you look at the...

policies of Brazil, this sense of this false unity of disappearing us and encouraging us to intermarry to the point where blacks no longer exist like we never did. Yes, that erasure. absolutely, history made sense to me. It needed to be one of the foundational tools for our liberation.

Adesoji Iginla (31:05.739)
Eurasia.

Aya Fubara Eneli (31:22.587)
So I was an early leader in Brazil's Black movement. I helped to co-found the Andre Rubocas group in 1974 and then the IPCN in 1975. Today I would be labeled feminist. We weren't necessarily using that terminology, but I would be considered, I am considered a pioneer in Black feminist scholarship because I

advocated for a historical methodology that centered our voices, our memory, and our autonomy. And history absolutely had to be at the core of this, right? But we had to come up with a different methodology because the very language embedded in their methodology,

Adesoji Iginla (32:09.634)
Okay.

Aya Fubara Eneli (32:25.322)
put us in a very subservient situation. And let me say this and say this very clearly. It is important for us to understand who we are and what we've done and the ways we existed and the ways we resisted. See this whole idea of the docile black.

the stupid black who goes along to get along. As long as a people see themselves as weak, they can never imagine themselves free. They can never imagine themselves being the authors of their own liberation. They will always be acquiescing, always be trying to fit in.

Adesoji Iginla (33:02.019)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:16.744)
to a narrative someone else has created for us. There is a reason they want us to think of ourselves as weak and docile and easily overcome. Now, this isn't going to get me a lot of fans, but there is no way.

Adesoji Iginla (33:27.596)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:36.83)
that we could have been taken off our continent, our lands, in the numbers that we were. Absent.

Aya Fubara Eneli (33:48.754)
the African leaders who went along.

Because we are a strong people and we built strong civilizations. And you see that in the Columbus. So we must go back and understand our strengths and our victories so that we reframe who we are.

And that, even in that, I hear Jorema's voice. Continue.

Continue and just don't be there, be present and be the best you can be. Don't let them make you into the thing that they've already decided that you are because of how they treat you and how it forces you into this place of, I have no options. And so we don't exercise any options.

Adesoji Iginla (34:22.637)
Mm.

Adesoji Iginla (34:45.006)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (34:50.45)
We must tell our own stories. Our survival depends on reclaiming our history from those who silenced us and increasingly from those who look like us who are silencing us. Who for whatever little acknowledgement they get, whatever little class

advantages they get will also buy into this idea, these ideas of who we are and what black culture means. You know, the fact of the matter is...

There's no Brazil culture without black people.

Adesoji Iginla (35:31.168)
Hmm.

come to think of it, Yeah, I've rule.

Aya Fubara Eneli (35:38.602)
The Quilombo is not a remnant of the past, but a living, breathing form of collective resistance. And when my daughter says she was born into a Quilombo, it wasn't of the Zumbi de Palmeiras kind, and I believe you all have also studied Zumbi and spoken with his mother, but...

Adesoji Iginla (36:00.92)
Mm-hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:05.158)
It was an understanding of a community that made her safe and allowed her to flourish even after I became a victim of what they call femicide.

Adesoji Iginla (36:09.742)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (36:23.242)
The invisibility and silencing of Black thought has been truly one of the most effective ways to perpetuate and reproduce cultural alienation and postpone the emergence and flourishing of critical Black thought. And so all over the world, wherever you see Black people today, there is this sense of us being less than

of our children supposedly struggling in school, of us over-representing in jails and things of that nature. We need to understand that this is by design, their design, as a result of the structures they put in place and not because there is some deficiency in our DNA.

Adesoji Iginla (36:59.362)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (37:13.516)
Hmm. Hmm.

Wow.

you

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:23.86)
Please go ahead.

Adesoji Iginla (37:25.024)
Okay, so when I asked the question about why history, because I noticed in the book written about you by Alex Ratz, he points out to the fact that when you go to university, you had to form a study group. Why was that study group? Why was that a brainchild of someone? What was the need behind having said study group?

Aya Fubara Eneli (37:44.126)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:03.978)
First, let me correct myself. We first moved to, we moved to Rio de Janeiro to a suburb of Rio de Janeiro, not Sao Paulo as I'd mentioned earlier. Sao Paulo was on my mind. Coming back to the question that you asked.

Adesoji Iginla (38:18.99)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:21.034)
To the extent that for those of us who really were the black elites who had been able to make it into college, into university, had been able to find the money to study at that level. To the extent that everything we were exposed to erased us.

Adesoji Iginla (38:43.126)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (38:45.418)
How else could we begin to challenge those concepts and learn our true history outside of study groups? We had to essentially supplement what we were getting through the curricula of the school. We had to create our own curricula.

and to have our own books that we studied and to be in conversation with one another and to begin to.

juxtapose what we were being told or fed in the books with our lived experiences that you cannot just as they would study us outside of us. We could not come to it with that same perspective. We had our own lived experiences and we had to sit with one another.

Adesoji Iginla (39:36.066)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (39:48.584)
to read both their texts and the texts that we could find and actually in the process of these study groups, essentially create our own living texts based on our own lived experiences. We all came from somewhere. We had families. We knew what we were experiencing.

Adesoji Iginla (40:04.812)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:11.656)
and what we continue to experience because in the midst of founding the Black movement and advocating these study groups, you know this also coincided with the height of the political repression, the military regimen in Brazil, and many of us were arrested.

Adesoji Iginla (40:32.034)
military regime in Brazil at the time.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:39.474)
And some of us were never to be seen or heard of again. And I was arrested.

Adesoji Iginla (40:43.822)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (40:48.734)
And I would never tell this story to my mother because it, to my grandmother, because it really upset her. And so I wouldn't have this conversation with her, but I would have the conversation with my daughter and with my aunt, with my aunts and my sisters. There were women who were sexually assaulted, tortured, abused.

Aya Fubara Eneli (41:12.85)
under this military regime. And when I was arrested, my grandmother was petrified. I was held for 24 hours. Fortunately, I was not one of the ones who would tell the story of, and if you have children, you might want to stop right here. I'll give you a couple of seconds.

I was not one of the ones who was raped or had things inserted in me. But I did have my skirt lifted up while they laughed and made fun of me.

These things stay with you.

Aya Fubara Eneli (42:05.48)
So we went on in 1977 to have what is translated as Black Fortnite at the University of Sao Paulo. This was groundbreaking. And it was in this setting with a lot of different speakers that I...

presented on Quilombo as both a historical and contemporary space of resistance because it still exists today even if we may not call it by that name but we have to go back and study to understand the similarities and even to understand the flaws because there were Quilombos in Brazil where

There were enslaved people, even in the Quilombos, owned by others. But do not mistake this with the kind of slavery that existed out of the Quilombos. Same conversation we're having about Africa. Yes, were the people enslaved? Yes, but it was not the kind of enslavement.

of the imperialists. Very important that as we're using language that we're able to break down that language and have a better understanding.

Aya Fubara Eneli (43:32.286)
The center of this intellectual work was our lived experiences and our relationship to our environment. I think if these imperialists had a better relationship with their environment, we would not be where we are today as a world. But we took care of our plants, we took care of our soil, we took care of our water. These things were important.

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:04.297)
participated with a group of black so-called activists in Rio de Janeiro and our goal was to

Aya Fubara Eneli (44:19.579)
inject into our consciousness and into the texts.

a more complete story of who we are. Now, some would call me radical in the sense that

advocate for a thing but at the same time be aware of and point out the flaws in the thing. And so although I maintained ties with the black movement, like the Unified Black Movement, I also experienced conflicts and political estrangements. Because I also wanted to consider

what it meant to be black, to be of African descent, and the ways in which we were responding that revealed an internalized self-hatred.

Adesoji Iginla (45:25.742)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (45:30.633)
And so I made a name for myself, if you will, based on the work that I was doing. There are records of me giving interviews and nationally-seculated newspapers and articles published in relevant periodicals, such as the Rivasta Cultura Voces, the Afro-Asian Studies and Heritage Journal.

I also served on the editorial board of the Centenary Bulletin of Abolition and Republic, in which I was responsible for interviews. I'm probably, at this time, best known for the work I did with a documentary called Ori in 1989. It was directed by sociologist and filmmaker Raquel Gerber.

And this, in this documentary, what we did was, and I wrote the screen play for it. What we did was we explored and documented the Brazilian Black movement between 1977 and 1988, exploring the relationship between Brazil and Africa.

with this notion of maroon settlements, Quilombos, as a central theme. And what I would argue, what I argued then and what I would continue to argue is this notion of Ori. maybe you can tell us a little bit more. You are Yoruba and I'm sure you recognize that word, don't you? Would you like to, Ori, yes, would you like to say something?

Adesoji Iginla (47:16.984)
Yeah, ORI. So ORI in the context in which it's using it is, well, literally it means the head. But metaphorically, it would mean your supposed destiny or manifested destiny as it were. So if.

Aya Fubara Eneli (47:41.545)
please carry on.

Adesoji Iginla (47:43.858)
you were to use it in the context of liberation, it would be a question of the more you exert yourself, then the intended results you seek would come to you. it's, you know, I mean, she captured, she captured the essence of the word metaphorically speaking. So

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:10.323)
I'm so glad you shared that because some may not know, but the Yoruba culture and Ifa, you can see it interwoven into the experiences of black people in Brazil, even all the way to Candomblé, that very much focuses on the Mauritias.

And my idea, my, my...

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:45.799)
The way I see Ori is that...

Aya Fubara Eneli (48:52.339)
For black people in Brazil, we, as we learn and remember our history, are reconnected to our head, to ourselves. There is a spiritual manifestation that then allows us to bring forth what we would like to see as opposed to always being acted on.

Adesoji Iginla (49:03.508)
It's you.

Adesoji Iginla (49:20.374)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:21.073)
And so the Ori, if you will, of the Black Brazilian is an evolution.

The more we connect, the more we evolve, the more how we show up in the society, regardless of the structural inequities, changes. And we cannot sit around waiting for some people to grant us our humanity. We cannot.

Adesoji Iginla (49:45.688)
Correct.

Aya Fubara Eneli (49:55.014)
allow ourselves to think only through intermarrying and erasing ourselves do we suddenly become human. We must make that connection, stay connected, and continue to do the work to evolve. And I would say that that would be true at this point, although my work initially was focused on the Columbus in Brazil.

I would say that this work is essential for black people all over the world because although our experiences are very different.

Adesoji Iginla (50:33.504)
and varied, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (50:36.083)
There are also some similarities and this idea of labeling us primitive and then erasing us as a people who only gain any kind of humanity to the extent that we can become more like our oppressors. Even this idea that we stay in this conversation of oppressed and oppressor.

Adesoji Iginla (50:57.814)
Hmm

Adesoji Iginla (51:04.718)
Congratulations.

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:05.639)
which was part of my concern with even the Black movement and the language we use and how that keeps us in this space of inferiority, of begging, of wanting. And I would hasten to say, well, look at our African leaders today. And how often do we have hat in hand?

Adesoji Iginla (51:28.782)
Thanks

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:34.365)
bowed over asking others to do for us what a reimagined and evolved or we could do for would allow us to do for ourselves.

Adesoji Iginla (51:50.382)
wisdom wisdom

Aya Fubara Eneli (51:55.924)
There is so much to share with you. am mindful of your time, which is why I did not go into song today. But I do want to,

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:11.761)
I do want to read something that I wrote, so my words, not my daughter's words this time, if you will bear with me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:27.385)
writing a historiography of Black people in Brazil. The project was a challenge. It was difficult. But I had to accept this challenge. The moment a white so-called intellectual told me that he was a Blacker than I was.

Aya Fubara Eneli (52:58.633)
For me, that was the most mystifying, sophisticated, and challenging statement. So what does it mean to be me?

Adesoji Iginla (53:08.705)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (53:10.651)
And how does this white man with none of my lived experiences now claim to be more me than me? And how often to use the modern terminology do we get gaslit?

by these so-called friends and allies who study us for their own purposes, study us like you would a piece of rock or an animal, and then tell us that they know and understand us better than we do ourselves. Because he had participated in some candomblé rituals,

Adesoji Iginla (53:52.28)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:02.097)
He felt, and he had studied us during slavery, he felt he understood us historically better than I did.

Adesoji Iginla (54:11.106)
Yeah. Correct.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:15.015)
This notion, and this was always my dilemma. Yes, I was an intellectual in the halls of the quote unquote academy, but I was always very clear of my connection to my people, which had to be centered outside of academia. But too many black people got into academia and lost their minds.

taking on these methodologies and trying to prove a point using

Adesoji Iginla (54:49.986)
their language.

Aya Fubara Eneli (54:51.357)
their language and methods that are stacked against you. From the beginning, so the minute you start to explain a thing with their words, you've already made an argument against the thing you're trying.

Adesoji Iginla (54:55.214)
correct.

Adesoji Iginla (55:05.806)
You

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:09.689)
One does not study in the Black person who's living the lived history. That is our story to tell. We are the living history of the Black person, not numbers, not what the colonizers wrote in their books.

Adesoji Iginla (55:16.696)
for it.

Adesoji Iginla (55:25.059)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:27.089)
We cannot accept that the history of Black people in Brazil at present should be understood only through ethnographic and sociological studies. Again, That God. Looking down on those primitive people. We must make our own history searching for ourselves, confronting our unconscious, our frustrations, our complexes.

Adesoji Iginla (55:38.712)
That will be plain into their hands.

All right.

Aya Fubara Eneli (55:56.89)
studying them, not deceiving them. Only in this way can we begin to understand and accept ourselves as we are, first and foremost, Black. And in our case, Black and Brazilian, without being confused with Americans or Africans, because our story is indeed different.

Adesoji Iginla (56:22.358)
Africans, yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (56:26.521)
as are our problems, and therefore the solutions must come from our understanding of ourselves.

Because we have had to forge a different kind of survival. Yes, drawing on the threads of the past, but still impacted by the environment in which we live.

So social black invisibility and discourse without adequate recognition among those who should be their peers is to our detriment. We simply have to reinvent the university as a black people across the world. But primarily, I speak about Brazil.

Because how they are training us, what they are telling us, sets us up to fail. This whole notion even today of imposter syndrome, this whole notion of not being able to wear our hair in its natural state and understand the beauty, the power.

Adesoji Iginla (57:40.184)
the uniqueness.

Adesoji Iginla (57:44.92)
So you're suggesting that we.

Aya Fubara Eneli (57:45.844)
We must grow our power because our power is great. We must embrace our strength. We must unify this courage to look within and to understand and accept ourselves as we are, as we connect to the or we, and we continue to evolve. No separatism.

Ego-centricity does not bring about unity. It does not spread nobility. It divides hearts. Let me tell you, the prejudice still inherent in the structure of Brazil against Black people is so violent and at the same time so subtle that it exists latently and often surfaces in our relationships with one another.

Aya Fubara Eneli (58:42.343)
Why the level of domestic violence amongst us?

Why are we killing ourselves? Why do we have more courage to take out our anger on each other as opposed to the real source of our pain?

We have, let's say, a love-hate attitude towards ourselves. The presence of and confrontation with the other disturbs us. And until we are willing to sit with that disturbance, then you're going to find groups of us who distance ourselves. I'm not quite black.

I'm not like those other black.

Adesoji Iginla (59:28.782)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:31.419)
And where does that get us? I want us to see ourselves as totality, past and present, mind and body. That's what I want us to see.

Adesoji Iginla (59:42.286)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (59:47.016)
This is something that I shared during an interview. Looking closely, one comes to the conclusion that one lives in a double or triple society. To the extent that it imposes on one's mind that it is a white society, that one's behavior must be standardized according to white dictates, one as a black person is negated.

begins to live another life, floats without a base on which to land, without reference and without a parameter of what one's peculiar form should be, and it shows up in different ways. Now it's all about the long wavy hair that's not ours. Now we've always worn wigs, but there's a difference between wearing wigs that show

the versatility of who we are as black women because we come in all shades and all hair types and there's a difference in only preferring one hair type.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:44.302)
has done.

Adesoji Iginla (01:00:49.869)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:00:57.491)
Being black is an identity that really has been attributed by those who dominated us. We are black because we are now juxtaposed against whiteness, because we did not call ourselves in that sense, I'm black, I'm black, I'm black, when we lived and thrived on our continent. But let me get to what I wanted to share with you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:08.981)
whiteness.

Adesoji Iginla (01:01:17.326)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:01:27.155)
Quilombo is a story. That word has a history. It also has a typology according to the region and according to the era. We need to study that. Where are the places that we lived and thrived? You will see certain similarities, right? We, Quilombo reminds us that we are human.

and that we have rights to territory, we have rights to land. What is all the fight about across the continent of Africa today? Dispossessing us of our land. Many, many, many parts of my story tell me that I have a right to the space I occupy. You, my Black brothers and sisters, my Black daughters and sons.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:02.688)
land.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:20.465)
My granddaughters and granddaughters, you have a right to the space you occupy. You need not shrink. You need not become less than. You need not conform.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:28.13)
Mmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:34.2)
You need not integrate.

Adesoji Iginla (01:02:36.524)
Yeah, very much so.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:02:38.461)
And that is what Palmares was about. That we have a right to the space we occupy within a system, within this nation, within any geographical niche. The earth is my Quilombo. My space is my Quilombo. Wherever I am, when I am, I am.

And orree is precisely your discovery that you are power. Listen, in the United States, I know there are lots of you who are, I understand, going to learn this or watch this from that area or in the UK or wherever.

What do they try the hardest to do? Convince you, you are powerless.

Because if you're powerless and you believe that you're powerless, you stop fighting. You stop believing. You don't continue. That's what happened to Jurema. How many Juremas are there not just in the favelas of Brazil?

Adesoji Iginla (01:03:38.712)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:03:55.517)
but in Sao Paulo.

in Lagos, in Benin, in Harlem, in Chicago, young black people who have bought into their powerlessness.

Adesoji Iginla (01:04:16.75)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:04:17.447)
The great tragedy today is precisely the loss of understanding of our past, the loss of contact with the other. This is fundamental.

And so I ask you, how many paths have I traveled?

as a black woman in Brazil who has traveled to go see my people in other Quilombos. How many paths have you traveled?

How many paths have we suffered?

and have you given up your yearning and your right to be happy?

Adesoji Iginla (01:05:05.827)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:08.423)
Yes, I struggled with mental health.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:05:14.681)
One could make the argument that I was imbued with so many gifts at a time when I saw in ways that so many around me didn't see that the responsibility of the work that needed to be done weighed on me. And sometimes, yes, I caved.

It is clear to me that the daily confrontation with the mechanisms of racism and sexism significantly impacted my mental health, but not just mine, of black people. And I would say to a whole other level of our black women as well. Because now we're not just dealing with the racism. We are also dealing

with the sexism, the patriarchy. No space to find peace even with in your home with your loved one.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:06:23.269)
Every human being lives between definitions and uncertainties. So let me end with this. I know I have taken much of your time, but I hope that you hear my passion and that although these are serious topics, you also feel my joy and my resilience and my determination to show up as everything, the fullness of who I am.

Adesoji Iginla (01:06:25.23)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:06:51.921)
as a black woman, unapologetic. Yes, taking up space. My daughter would say I would walk into a room and it's like a star walked in, not in the sense of a celebrity, but just the energy that I carried. Yes, I was noticed.

Adesoji Iginla (01:07:11.374)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:07:13.053)
But what do you do with that, with those gifts when you've been given it? How do you develop them? How do you use them to the liberation of your people? And so today I am rediscovered and studied because I was willing to take up space and to go where others said I could not go. So let me read this to you. Between lights and sound, I find only you, my body.

Old companion of the illusions of hunting the beast. Body suddenly imprisoned by the destiny of outsiders. Body map of a distant country seeking other frontiers, limiting my conquest. Mythical quilombo that makes me the content of the shadow of words. Irrecoverable contours that my hands try to reach. The body is also punctuated with meanings. It is the body that occupies spaces and appropriates them.

A place or a manifestation with a black majority is a place of black people or a black people's party. They are not merely bodily encounters. They are encounters of one image with the other images in the mirror. With black people, with white people, with people of other colors and physical complexions and with other histories, the body is also memory of pain.

which the images of slavery do not let us forget, but also a fragments of joy of the careful gaze at dark skin and the gentle touch on curly or kinky hair, in the bodily movements that many ancestors made in work, in art, in life, a nod of the head, a bodily movement to escape stereotypes, prejudices, and explicit racism.

A bodily movement to enter places where Black people do not enter or are still an unequal minority. The head synthesizes all of this. Face and hair are marks of the social and political race that differentiates us. Head, intellect, memory, thought. Each one has the right to follow this path. A gem returns, looking at oneself in the mirror of race and reconstructing one's identity and body.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:09:35.164)
Reflecting on one's journey and the paths of the people to whom one feels connected, when last did you go and bask in the memories of those with whom you are connected? Beatrice, me, I am one of our icons. The black body, even when still to speak or fixed in a photograph, expresses meaning in body memory or in the difficult construction.

from the perspective of citizenship, the line of the black body continues to trace the space. Think of the fights about citizenship in the US today and your Supreme Court saying just by how we look, we can be dehumanized.

Adesoji Iginla (01:10:25.87)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:10:28.221)
Black body continues to trace the space, a thread of memory, a thread of identity, a mirror that questions us from head to toe, full of symbols. The image in the mirror speaks to the body that shapes the space. At every place and moment, the two ask themselves questions that will not be silenced anytime soon. Am I pretty? Am I smart?

Am I strong? Do I have power? Image as visual representation, photography and film body as territory of power relations and racialization, which is why they're always trying to own our bodies. Trying to police our bodies, the police in Brazil, in New York, in Haiti, in Ghana, all the police forces trying to.

Control black bodies.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:11:28.477)
Body as territory of power relations and racialization, identity as recognition, and as a possibility of recreation, including black thought, embraces between reason and emotion.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:11:45.704)
My texts, they have these fragments that other authors are now highlighting as components of traveling cultures, identities between places in transit in the diaspora. In my text, the black body can symbolically extend to its maximum extent until it merges with the landscape, with the Quilombo territory. recall the magic of

Queen Nanny of the Maroons.

Adesoji Iginla (01:12:17.838)
Yeah. I'll cut that in as well, of Haiti.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:22.845)
Where are they? Are they in the water? How did we get overcome? Are they in the trees?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:12:38.249)
Quilombo is the geographical space where man has the sensation of being near the ocean.

You need to feel like you're in the Serra de Barriga. All the cosmic energy enters your body. I feel big in a mountain range. I feel like that tall. I feel so tall like the Mbangala people. You know what this is like? This thing about being black really, but it's black because it's the man connected. It's the human being. It's the woman.

Connected to the land. It's the human being who knows the land better than those dogon horizons It's the human being the cool the black man the black woman the color of mud the color of the earth Because Gagarin saw the blue earth, but there's also black earth There is this earth that is earth, which is the thing we're most afraid of losing is it not it is dust It is the dust of the earth

Adesoji Iginla (01:13:40.59)
Hmm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:43.943)
which is something that balances with the other gases that gets foundation.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:13:51.37)
Hmm, blue earth, dark sky. Ghosts the streets like a naked ghost walking. Who am I looking for? What kind of body do I want to be in? In what bed does such a restless spirit like mine rest? On sunny routes to a bluesy rhythm and past backwaters?

in future closed and furious silence.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:14:33.011)
So the question isn't anymore, so much who am I?

It's Who Are You?

And who will you be?

as you connect to your Ori.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:54.606)
Thank you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:14:58.349)
Wow.

Adesoji Iginla (01:15:01.645)
Hmm.

Adesoji Iginla (01:15:06.2)
what else there to say other than we've listened to Ms Beatriz Nascimento's and for those who want to get your book

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:19.121)
I do want to say one thing. I forgot to tell this story because it's not the favorite part of my life.

Adesoji Iginla (01:15:21.048)
gone.

Adesoji Iginla (01:15:25.582)
Mm.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:28.497)
I told you my life was cut short.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:34.345)
1995.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:39.081)
52 years old.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:15:43.303)
and someone I considered a friend.

was in a very violent relationship. And I advocated for her.

and her husband who had previously been convicted of manslaughter.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:16:13.161)
testified that he was so offended by me advising his wife, my friend, to leave the marriage.

that after drinking some beers and as he said, taking some medication for his stomach, he decided to put five bullets into me and end my life.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:16:48.979)
But here comes the kicker. Could there be something?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:16:58.107)
Even more shocking than my murder? yes. And it's a revelation of what I have been sharing with you about the self-hatred.

And so there was a trial. He was captured. He ran away after killing me and he was captured. Antonio was his name. And there was a trial.

the trial. My friend, the woman I was advocating for and fighting for and ultimately paid for with my life.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:33.25)
were invocative.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:44.489)
testified in open court.

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:47.576)
Yes.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:49.199)
against me the murder victim

Adesoji Iginla (01:17:54.124)
Hmm

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:17:56.266)
Calling my reputation into question and trying to so tarnish me so as to ensure that this man of hers would not face any retribution or consequences for killing me.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:18:29.725)
This, my friends, my children, is what happens when we are disconnected.

Adesoji Iginla (01:18:38.646)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:18:41.137)
Because we all know.

that had he not been convicted, which he was, and he was given just 17 years for taking my life, he would probably have eventually killed her.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:19:00.573)
But I will not end on that note. Because here is the thing about living and taking up space. I live on.

Adesoji Iginla (01:19:12.748)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:19:13.681)
I live on through my daughter, a magnificent young woman. I live on through my work. I live on through all the people that have been influenced by my writings, my speeches.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:19:33.425)
Remember my joy. Find your joy. Connect to your ori. Therein lies your power.

that cannot be extinguished by any system. We are living proof we cannot be extinguished if we stay connected and remember and live. Thank you for having me this evening. It was a wonderful experience to talk with you.

Adesoji Iginla (01:20:11.138)
Thank you very much for coming through. Would you like to share your book?

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:20:17.595)
You know, there's so many books that have been written about me. I didn't even talk to you about all the awards and recognitions that I've gotten. I was chosen as woman of the year by the National Council for Women's Rights in 1986. In 2016,

The National Archives Library in Rio de Janeiro was named after me. My daughter donated my papers and my writings to the National Archives so that they are available for other people to do research. In 2023, the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro awarded me a posthumous honorary doctorate.

Adesoji Iginla (01:20:42.36)
Yeah.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:21:07.881)
And was also inscribed in Brazil's Book of Heroes and Heroines of the Nation. So although I was killed on January 28th, 1995, I certainly live on. So there's certainly the documentary Ori. If you Google there are many, because I hear you guys have this thing called Google. So much easier to do research now in your day than in my day, but.

Don't let that make you get lazy because someone is writing those things. So we still need to do our own research and do our own writings, right? But here is one of my books that has been translated to English. The dialectic is in the scene. Now there's another one that I think you like. Yes.

Adesoji Iginla (01:21:46.156)
Right hand, yeah. Dialectic is in the C.

Adesoji Iginla (01:21:57.71)
Yes, it's titled Esso Atlantica. English translation is I am Atlantic. It's written by Alex Ratz. Ratz is spelled R-A-T-T-S. And it goes into.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:22:15.625)
And this one my daughter contributed to, so this is the idea to my heart. But please go ahead.

Adesoji Iginla (01:22:19.32)
Yeah.

So yes, yeah, so the book by Alex Ratz draws from thoughts which other authors shared about Beatrix. Some of her works are also in there, lots of poems and what have you. It's a very short book, but believe you me, it's well worth its weight in gold. And so, yes, we've come to the end of another episode of

Women and Resistance, if this is your first time here, do like, share, subscribe. We're hoping to get to 2,000 subscribers by the end of the year. And as is custom, next week we'll be looking at the lives and times of Ocilla Macafi. The name again is Ocilla Macafi. And until then, Miss Beatrice.

Aya Fubara Eneli (01:23:19.463)
It was an honor and let the music play.

Adesoji Iginla (01:23:25.327)
Yes, and from me it's good night and God bless.

Adesoji Iginla (01:23:33.196)
Mm.