O papel da tradução na construção da identidade da literatura afro-americana no Brasill

This paper discusses the role of translation in the construction of the identity of African-American literature in Brazil, by considering the relations between the Brazilian sociocultural context, infl uenced by biological and cultural miscegenation, and the particular way that the literary criticism represented by essays and translations of the Brazilian critic Sergio Milliet, published in between the 40’s and 60’s, approaches AfricanAmerican poetry, with special focus on Langston Hughes’ poems. In this paper, differences between Brazilian and American racial contexts are brought into light in regard to the discourses on miscegenation and race. It is discussed the extent to which Sergio Milliet developed a racialized identity for African-American poetry in his essays, which, however, was rebuilt through translation, in his anthology Obras Primas da Poesia Universal, with a less racialized perspective so that African-American aesthetics could sound less dissonant and regional and more inclined towards the principle of universality which characterizes the anthology composed of renowned foreign and Brazilian poets.