Nísia Floresta

Nísia Floresta

Nísia Floresta Brasileira Augusta, pseudonym of Dionísia Gonçalves Pinto, (Papari, Rio Grande do Norte, October 12, 1810 — Rouen, France, April 24, 1885) was a Brazilian educator, translator, writer, poet and feminist.

She is considered the "first Brazilian feminist" and possibly the first still in the 19th. century to break through public-private boundaries by publishing her works in newspapers, when the local press was just beginning. She also coordinated a girls' school in Rio de Janeiro and wrote a book in defense of the rights of women, Native Americans and slaves.

Her first book, and the first in Brazil to deal with women's intellectual equality and their capacity and right to be educated and participate in society on an equal basis with men, was Women's rights and men's injustice (published in 1832).^[1] It was a translation of Woman not Inferior to Man, often attributed to Mary Wortley Montagu.^[2] It was reprinted twice.^[3][4]

This book was originally considered to be a loose translation of A Vindication of the Rights of Woman by Mary Wollstonecraft, as Nisia Floresta herself had claimed, but in 1996 Maria Lúcia Garcia Pallares-Burke discovered that it actually was a translation of Woman not Inferior to Man.^[5][6]

She also wrote three other books:

• Conselhos a minha filha (1842)
• Opúsculo humanitário (1853)
• A Mulher (1859).

See also

• First-wave feminism
• List of feminists
• Women's suffrage
• Feminism

External links

• Book analysis at Scielo: Nísia Floresta, O Carapuceiro e outros ensaios de tradução cultural (Portuguese) and (English)
• nature, nurture and nation: Nísia Floresta's engagement in the breast-feeding debate in Brazil and France (Portuguese)
• Nísia Floresta Brasileira Augusta: pioneira do feminismo brasileiro – séc. xix Constância Lima Duarte (Portuguese)

References