My various interview sessions with contemporary Afro-Brazilian writers revealed one issue that was controversial and contested among the interviewees: modernism and modernity. For reasons best explained by their resistance to any formulation emanating from the other—that is, the dominant Brazilian intellectual currents and traditions, and Western institutions in general, which marginalize whatever does not conveniently fit their neatly packaged “canonical” paradigms—these writers reject assertions, such as that by Wilson Martins, for example, that Afro-Brazilians are yet to produce “first-quality” literature. As I pointed out in the preceding chapter, Afro-Brazilian writers were excluded from the most significant cultural and intellectual moment of Brazilian modernism, the Semana de arte moderna of 1922. Although writers like Cuti and Barbosa believe this movement has nothing to do with Afro-Brazilian modernity, I suggest that the fact that there were a number of mature writers, who were building on the legacies of Cruz e Souza and Lima Barreto of the turn of the century, such as Lino Guedes and later on Solano Trindade, was an indication of black literary expression deserving of acknowledgment. Instead, Afro-Brazilians were only the-matized during that significant literary and cultural movement. As a result, many Afro-Brazilian writers remained marginalized well into the late 1970s. Through an examination of the works of Solano Trindade, Abdias do Nascimento, Eduardo de Oliveira, and Oswaldo de Camargo, this chapter gives due recognition to their contribution as forerunners of Afro-modernity.