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Centre for the Study of Contemporary Women's Writing (CCWW)

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (c) Humberto Brito.JPG
Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida (Photo © Humberto Brito)

Ana Djaimilia dos Santos Pereira de Almeida Brito is a Portuguese writer whose pen name is Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida. She was born in Luanda in 1982 and was brought up in the suburbs of Lisbon. She graduated in Portuguese Studies from the NOVA University of Lisbon. 'Amadores', her MA dissertation in Literary Theory, written in 2006, was awarded the Best Dissertation Prize in 2010 by the Centre for Portuguese Literature at Coimbra University. This is a piece of research that theorizes about amateurism and argues why the concept of an amateur attitude can only be understood in public terms. She also holds a PhD in Literary Theory from the University of Lisbon (2012) with a dissertation entitled 'Inseparabilidade'. By examining the extent to which a person is inseparable from her own life, Almeida rescues the notion of 'agency', and argues that the acknowledgement of inseparability, from which springs our response to fatalism, is what allows our considerations about people’s motivations to become truthful and just. Pintado com o pé, published in 2019, includes the essays 'Inseparabilidade' and 'Amadores', taken from her PhD and MA dissertations.

As well as non-fiction books and plays, she has published several works of fiction, both novels and novellas, for example, Esse cabelo (2015), Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso (2018) and Três Histórias de Esquecimento (2022). Her books have been published in Portugal, Brazil, the USA, Italy, Argentina, Switzerland, China, not to mention being translated into Arabic, Catalan, Danish and Slovak.

Djaimilia Pereira de Almeida. Tecelã de Mundos Passados e Presentes, the first critical volume dedicated to her work, edited by Sandra Sousa and Sheila Khan, will be published in 2023, demonstrating the extent to which her work has become a landmark in contemporary Portuguese literature. By depicting different aspects of the life of the Angolan diaspora in Portugal and of the young Portuguese generation of African descent, her books of fiction have contributed significantly towards bringing diverse, hitherto unheard voices into the literary debate of postcolonial Portuguese society that had not been present before. On the one hand, she has created characters, such as Cartola, the Angolan 'assimilado', in Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso, and Boa Morte, the former Angolan soldier fighting alongside the Portuguese troops during the colonial wars, in Maremoto, which expand and enrich the range of fictional characters in contemporary Portuguese literature on Portuguese colonialism which, until now, mainly represented the former Portuguese white war veteran and the 'retornado' (returned coloniser). In addition, by exploring historical figures such as that of the slave trader, in A Visão das Plantas, and that of the 19th-century Black servant, in 'Bruma', the third narrative of Três Histórias de Esquecimento, both superficially mentioned but hitherto unexplored in Portuguese literature, her writing shows how much Portuguese literature reproduces the historical oblivion in which Portuguese memory narratives are immersed. On the other hand, by exploring the post-memories of the Portuguese generation of African descent, Almeida’s writing expands the framework with which to approach the notion of trauma and loss which is primarily associated with the postcolonial experience of the white Portuguese.

Almeida has won or been shortlisted for the major prizes awarded for literature in Portuguese. In 2013, she was one of the winners of the Essay Prize awarded by Revista Serrote, a periodical published by the Instituto Moreira Salles, in Brazil. The English translation of Esse cabelo (That Hair) was shortlisted for the PEN America Translation Prize and was voted Best Translation of the Year by World Literature Today magazine. Luanda, Lisboa, Paraíso won the 2019 Oceanos Prize, the 2018 Inês de Castro Foundation Prize, and the 2019 Eça de Queiroz Prize. A Visão das Plantas came second in the 2020 Oceanos Awards, was shortlisted for the 2019 Fernando Namora Prize for Literature 2019, for the 2019 PEN Club/Narrative and for the 2020 APE/DGLAB Grand Prize for Novel and Novella. Almeida’s As Telefones was shortlisted for the 2021 APE/DGLAB Grand Prize for Novel and Novella. In 2022, Maremoto was shortlisted for the Casino da Póvoa Literary Prize. In 2018, she was awarded a 12-month literary bursary by the Direção-Geral do Livro, dos Arquivos e das Bibliotecas (DGLAB) of the Ministry of Culture. 

She has written opinion pieces for a range of newspapers and magazines around the world, including the New York Times, Neue Zürcher Zeitung, Revista Serrote, Common Knowledge, ZUM, Contemporânea, Marie Claire Brasil, Folha de São Paulo, and La Repubblica. She writes a column for Brazil’s Quatro Cinco Um literary magazine. She has also blogged for the website of Brazilian publishing house Companhia das Letras. In March 2021, she was appointed consultant in matters involving social inclusion at the Casa Civil [Civil House] of the Presidency of the Republic, an institution that integrates a group of consultants from various fields to advise the President. In Spring 2022, she was writer-in-residence at the Literaturhaus Zürich. She is Assistant Professor at New York University, teaching on the module The Afro-Diasporic Body and Mind. In 2023, Almeida received the FLUL Alumni Prize for her notable lifetime achievements.

Compiled by Margarida Rendeiro