Dictatorship, Resistance, and Feminisms in Dona Ivone Lara’s Sorriso Negro
More than simply a paragon of Brazilian samba, Dona (Lady) Ivone Lara’s 1981 Sorriso Negro (Black Smile) is an album deeply embedded in the political and social tensions of its time. Released less than two years after the Brazilian military dictatorship approved the Lei de Anistia (the “Opening” that put Brazil on a path toward democratic governance), Sorriso Negro reflects the seminal shifts occurring within Brazilian society as former exiles reinforced notions of civil rights and feminist thought in a nation under the iron hand of a military dictatorship that had been in place since 1964.
Dona Ivone Lara has always claimed to have no connections with political movements or activism. However, Sorriso Negro became a symbol for the feminist and Black movements which were gaining strength in the country. Songs like “A Sereia Guiomar” and “Sorriso Negro”
are examples of how she navigated the tense gender and race relations in Brazil while keeping a façade of neutrality. Furthermore, they remind us of the urgency of a new vocabulary to express the myriad of strategies of resistance present in the lives of underrepresented groups.
Mila Burns, Ph.D. is Assistant Professor at the Department of Latin American & Latino Studies at Lehman College, CUNY. She is the author of Dona Ivone Lara’s Sorriso Negro (Bloomsbury Academic, 2019), which will be published in Portuguese in March (Cobogó, 2021); and Nasci para Sonhar e Cantar: Dona Ivone Lara, a Mulher no Samba (Editora Record, 2009). Her work has been published in a variety of journals and countries, including The Latin Americanist, Revista História e Cultura, and Revista Estudios de Seguridad y Defensa.
Burns’s current book manuscript investigates the Brazilian influence on the military coup d’état in Chile, in 1973. Her interdisciplinary background influences her research, with an emphasis on media, anthropology, and history. For almost two decades, she has been a prominent journalist in Brazil and New York. She is currently the anchor and editor-in-chief of America News, a newscast dedicated to the Latinx community broadcast at TV Globo International.
