Maréia and the Emergence of the Ancestral Novel

Abstract

This paper focuses on Miriam Alves’s novel Maréia (2019) as a case of innovative literary form. In doing so, it underscores how the novel emerges as a new mode of rendering contemporary Black experience and thought. From the sociopolitical standpoint of a Black woman novelist whose epistemology differs considerably from artistic conventions because of her cultural and feminist perspectives, Alves advances the genre in terms of content and style and creates a prototype version of the ancestral novel. By centralizing the lyricism of African heritage and its multidimensional symbolism in parallel with the representation of white backgrounds, Alves achieves a fictional narrative that speaks to the sociopolitical legacies that have been bequeathed to the Brazilian society.