Djamila Ribeiro

Djamila Taís Ribeiro dos Santos (born 1 August 1980) is a Brazilian academic, philosopher, writer, and activist. She is best known for her studies on racism and Black feminism.

Overview

She is currently a Visiting Professor at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), where she is part of the Dr. Martin Luther King Jr. Visiting Professors Program.

A practitioner of candomblé and initiated for the orixá Oxóssi, she holds a master's degree in Political Philosophy from the Federal University of São Paulo (Unifesp). Ribeiro has emerged as a leading voice in black feminism, both in Brazil and internationally, with a significant presence in the media.

Ribeiro is a prominent figure in the publishing world, whose influence and contributions have been widely recognized. An author of works that have sold over 1 million copies, she also coordinates the Plural Feminisms Collection, an initiative that has published fourteen books by Black authors, predominantly women, with a focus on accessibility and the democratization of knowledge. This project has played a key role in promoting literary diversity and inclusion in Brazil, earning Djamila recognition for efforts in democratizing books and reading.

Additionally, her works have achieved international attention, being translated into multiple languages, as English (Yale University Press), French (Éditions Anacaona), Spanish (Txalaparta, Mandacaru and Tumbalacasa), Italian (Capovolte) and also featured at literary festivals around the world.

Since 2019, she has kept a weekly column at Folha de S.Paulo, while also previously writing for CartaCapital. Also in 2019, Ribeiro was considered by BBC one of the 100 most influential women in the world. Continuing in alignment with her political thinking, she filed a lawsuit against Twitter in 2020, under the accusation that the platform profits from racist comments and hate speech.

In 2022, she founded Espaço Feminismos Plurais a non-profit institute in São Paulo that offers a range of free services for women in social vulnerability. As a scholar, she worked at prestigious universities, like the Pontifical Catholic University of São Paulo and, in 2024, she was invited to teach for a semester at New York University (NYU) at Andrés Bello Chair.

Djamila Ribeiro in the United States

In 2024, her book Lugar de Fala was translated into English and published as “Where We Stand” by Yale University Press. Translated by Padma Viswanathan and edited by Abbie Storch, this edition features a foreword by Nigerian philosopher Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie, one of Ribeiro's cited influences, and includes commentaries by influential U.S. scholars such as Patricia Hill Collins, Ibram X. Kendi, Linda Alcoff, Priyamvada Gopal, and Kia Lilly Caldwell.

Invited to assume the Andrés Bello Chair for Visiting Professors at New York University (NYU), Ribeiro spent a semester teaching courses on the feminisms of the Global South and exploring the intersectionality of race, gender, and class through theories developed by women from that region. During her tenure, she also hosted public debates and lectures featuring scholars such as Kendi, Selma Dealdina, Alessandra Devulsky, Linda Alcoff and Nadia Yala Kisukidi for public debates and lectures.

Following the launch of Where We Stand, Ribeiro embarked on an extensive tour, visiting institutions including Yale, Harvard, Spelman College, San Diego State University, Rutgers University, University of Georgia and UCLA, as well as the Politics and Prose bookstore, discussing the concept of "place of speech," a central theme in her work.

In Brazil, Ribeiro has promoted the translation and publication of U.S. literature. Through her publishing imprint, she released the first Portuguese translation of Black Power: The Politics of Liberation by Charles V. Hamilton and Kwame Ture, and she authored the foreword for the Brazilian editions of works by prominent American authors, including Maya Angelou’s I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings.

Ribeiro's initial foray into writing forewords in Brazil was with Angela Davis’s Women, Race, and Class. After initiating contact with Davis in 2015 to facilitate a translation, the Brazilian edition was published in 2016 and subsequently promoted through a book tour. In 2018, while serving as curator of Brazil's largest book club, Ribeiro selected Toni Morrison’s The Bluest Eye as her favorite novel. With Morrison's authorization and a few months before the author's death, Ribeiro wrote the foreword for the Brazilian edition - a contribution that played a significant role in the republishing of Morrison's complete works in Brazil.

In 2020, Ribeiro compiled a collection of articles and poems written by Audre Lorde, resulting in the book Sou sua irmã: Escritos reunidos e inédito. It was published by Editora Ubu, with a translation by Stephanie Borges.

In recognition of her work, Ribeiro was honored with the Gender Equality and Racial Inclusion Award at the 8th Leadership for the Americas Awards Gala hosted by the Inter-American Dialogue in 2023, held at the Organization of American States headquarters in Washington, D.C.

Media

In 2014, an interview with journalist Pedro Bial on the program Na Moral brought Ribeiro national visibility. Her social media posts became a platform for discussing Black feminism, racism, and philosophy, resonating with a broad Brazilian audience. In addition to strengthening her digital presence, she also contributed an online column to CartaCapital for five years.

In 2018, TEDx São Paulo hosted Ribeiro for a talk titled “Precisamos romper com os silêncios” (“We Need to Break Through the Silences”), which addressed social inclusion and justice and marked one of her first appearances with international reach. During this period, she also contributed to media outlets such as Al Jazeera, CGTN, and The Guardian, among others. Since then, she has been contributing opinion articles to foreign publications, such as the Italian newspaper Il manifesto and the German magazine Der Spiegel.