Song for Anninho
By: Gayl Jones.
Publisher: Beacon Press
Published: 1999
Place of publication: Boston
Language: eng
Number of pages: 119
Subjects: Slave insurrections -- Brazil -- Palmares (Pernambuco) -- Poetry; Blacks -- Brazil -- Palmares (Pernambuco) -- History -- 17th century -- Poetry; Women, Black -- Brazil -- Palmares (Pernambuco) -- Poetry
Description: In seventeenth-century Brazil there were at least seven fugitive African slave enclaves. Palmares, a settlement of more than 20,000, was the longest to survive, but ultimately was destroyed by the Portuguese, who re-enslaved its inhabitants. This book-length poem is the haunting love story of a black man and woman set in the real Palmares.

Anninho, beloved of Almeyda, is an escaped African slave who settled in Palmares. After the final battle between Palmares and the Portuguese, Almeyda, her breasts cut off by a Portuguese soldier, relates her tale of love and escape to her rescuer, Zibatra, a mystic enchantress, biblical scholar, and medicine woman.