Biography
Noémia de Sousa was born 1926 in Catembe, near the city of Maputo, Mozambique. Known as the Mother of Mozambican poets, she is the author of Sangue Negro (Black Blood), published in 2001. Regarded as anti-colonial literature, her writings represent cultural nationalism and the resistance of African women under Portuguese colonial domination in the 1940s. Although she was jailed for her political activism, her literary contributions played a crucial role in creating awareness about the Moçambicanidade movement. Poet and newspaper editor, de Sousa edited the women’s pages of the newspaper O Brado Africano from 1949 to 1951. She left Mozambique in 1951 and settled permanently in Portugal, where she died in 2002.
Poetry Collections
Sangue Negro(1951, 2001), The Association of Mozambican Writers (Associação dos Escritores Moçambicanos- AEMO), Maputo
Sources
“Noémia De Sousa.” Poetry Foundation, Poetry Foundation, https://www.poetryfoundation.org/poets/no%C3%A9mia-de%20sousa. Accessed 8 Apr. 2022. “Sangue Negro.” Kapulana, 7 Apr. 2022, https://www.kapulana.com.br/produto/sangue-negro/. Accessed 8 Apr. 2022. “Noémia De Sousa - Sangue Negro.” Templo Cultural Delfos, Templo Cultural Delfos, https://www-elfikurten-com-br.translate.goog/2015/07/noemia-de-sousa.html. Accessed 8 Apr. 2022. “Noémia De Sousa.” Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, 25 Feb. 2022, https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/No%C3%A9mia_de_Sousa. Accessed 8 Apr. 2022. Dictionary of African Biography. Eds. Gates, Henry Louis, Emmanuel Akyeampong, and Steven J. Niven. : Oxford University Press, . Oxford Reference. Accessed 8 Apr. 2022. Darch, Colin, and Jon Woronoff. Historical Dictionary of Mozambique. Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.
