about the author

As both writer and government leader, Alda do Espírito Santo played an essential role in São Tomé and Príncipe’s transition to independence from Portugal. She writes as a woman, to women, and for women, presenting her readers with images of strong women who have the power to liberate the islands from Portuguese colonial oppression. Despite her privileged upbringing, she dedicates her words to the working-class women of the islands who carried, both figuratively and literally, the future of the islands on their backs. The women she describes in poems like “By the Água Grande” are mothers, workers, and, most importantly, fighters.

Alda Espírito Santo’s poetry, which so lauded the islands’ women, celebrated and nourished a culture that relied on the power and strength of women. It points to the many ways in which women poets in Africa have played—and still play—an important role as agents for change in the liberated Portuguese colonies. Despite her influence in São Tomé, her poetry, like that of most Lusophone African (and especially women) writers, has been relegated to the periphery of post-colonial studies.