The complexity and inherent contradictions of the place of the Afro-Brazilian woman in the larger context of Brazil's so-called racial paradise can be summed up by what Marilena Chaui, in Conformismo e resistência, describes as the drama of the family setting through which pleasure is provided but which is also a “nucleus of tension and conflicts” (145). In this mixture of social conformism and resistance, the Afro-Brazilian woman is multiply burdened. Oftentimes fulfilling the roles of mother, lover, provider, spokesperson, encourager, and nourisher, she becomes fragmented in an effort to assert her individuality amid social conventions and racial stereotypes. To break with these stereotypical roles, the Afro-Brazilian woman must not only break the conventional rules; she must also compound her roles even further by becoming militant and subversive as opposed to being subordinate. And this is where, in most cases, the recurrent concern lies in self-mystification in order to recuperate the dignity of that fragmented construction.

Dating from the era of slavery, the Afro-Brazilian woman has been portrayed as a slave, a domestic servant, a black mammy, or at best, a “mulatta,” a sexual and sexualized object whose function is to satisfy the perverse desires of the master without any hesitation.