Noémia de Sousa

Carolina Noémia Abranches de Sousa Soares (20 September 1926 – 4 December 2002)[1] was a poet from Mozambique who wrote in the Portuguese language. She was also known as Vera Micaia.[2] She was of mixed Portuguese and Bantu descent.

Life

She was born of mixed-race heritage in Catembe, on the south side of the bay across from the Mozambican capital Maputo. Her father was a descended from a Luso-Afro-Indian family from the island of Mozambique; her maternal grandfather was German.[1] Her father taught her to read at the age of four, four years before he died.[1][3][4][5]

Moving to Portugal by the age of 25, she lived in Lisbon, working as a translator from 1951 to 1964. She then left for Paris, where she worked for the local consulate of Morocco. She went back to Lisbon in 1975 and became a member of the ANOP.

She worked with several newspapers and magazines throughout her life. Some of her most notable collaborations were with Mensagem (CEI); Mensagem (Luanda); Itinerário; Notícias do Bloqueio (Porto, 1959); O Brado Africano; Moçambique 58; Vértice (Coimbra), Sul (Brazil).

Works

  • Sangue Negro, Maputo: Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos, 2001.
  • "If You Want to Know Me" - this poem appears in many anthologies, including in Margaret Dickindon (ed.), When Bullets Begin to Flower, and Margaret Busby (ed.), Daughters of Africa (1992).[2]

References

  1. 1 2 3 Anita De Melo, "Noémia de Sousa", in Dictionary of Literary Biography: African Lusophone Writers.
  2. 1 2 Margaret Busby (ed.), "Noémia de Sousa", Daughters of Africa, London: Jonathan Cape, 1992, p. 328.
  3. ↑ The Northeastern Dictionary of Women's Biography. Boston: Northeastern University Press, 1999, p. 181. ISBN 9781555534219.
  4. ↑ Henry Louis Gates and Anthony Appiah (eds),Africana: The Encyclopedia of the African and African American Experience. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 1999. p. 26. ISBN 9780465000715.
  5. ↑ "Noémia de Sousa: poesia de combate em Moçambique", Noticias, 2 October 2013.


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