Yara Monteiro
Portugal, Angola
Yara Nakahanda Monteiro was born in Angola in 1979 and moved to Portugal when she was two years old. She writes poetry and fiction. Yara studied screenwriting and contemporary art. She has collaborated in the creation of scripts and screenplays for audiovisual arts and is a curator for podcast programming. She recently won the Poetry Prize Prémio Literário Glória de Sant’Anna, awarded to the author of the best poetry book written in Portuguese.In her own words: she is a great-great-granddaughter of slavery, a great-granddaughter of racial intermarriage, a granddaughter of independence and a daughter of the diaspora.
(source: www.yaramonteiro.com)
What you can't miss:
Angolan-born, Portugal-residing Vitoria is a young woman traveling to an Angola she has no memory of, desperate to connect with the mother she never knew. Will she find answers? This novel, Yara's first to be translated into English, is a lyrical narrative of sisterhood, loss and humans' eternal quest for love and acceptance.
This collection can be classified as decolonial and ecofeminist poetry. The poems are reflections on the condition of women and black people, everyday life, banishment and how violence against women is related to the destruction of nature. The reader is confronted with the ongoing effects of colonialism, racism and identity dualities, in an intimate lyrical landscape that searches for healing.
(available in Portuguese only)
