Chapter 13 - The Boundless Dramas of Dancing Mulatas

Summary

When Mônica Santana’s solo performance Isto Não É Uma Mulata (2015) premiered at Casa Escafandro in Salvador Bahia, the poet/playwright/performer led her audience through a multilingual interrogation of the mulata trope, denouncing Brazil’s literary canon and founding narratives of mestiçagem while claiming agency over the terms of how and when the mulata’s body would be put to work. Calling on a trans-hemispheric sisterhood of feminist icons of the Black diaspora from Queen Latifah to MC Carol, Santana’s Isto Não É Uma Mulata exemplifies the type of cultural nation-making that is forged in the shared consciousness of the Black Atlantic. This essay opens Santana’s play to a comparative reading of sex-radical feminist performances enacted by mulatas of popular music and culture, examining the political openings that are seized when Black women work their bodies in the interest of protest. Santana performs in tune with artists such as Brazil’s infamous funkeira MC Carol, manipulating her spectator’s disdain for satirical crudeness and boundless sexuality in order to infuse pointed social commentary with tracks such as “Não Foi Cabral” and her collaborative manifesto with Karol Conká, “100% Feminista.”