Lugar de Fala (Where We Stand) is required reading for admission to Human Rights at the USP Law School

Lugar de Fala (Place of Speech), by philosopher and writer Djamila Ribeiro, has been included in the official bibliography for the admissions process to the graduate program in Human Rights at the Faculdade de Direito da Universidade de São Paulo (University of São Paulo Law School), the traditional Faculdade do Largo São Francisco. The call for applications, published this week, requires the book as reading for applicants to the master’s and doctoral programs in the field. Applications remain open until June 2.

“I receive this news with great joy and a sense of responsibility. Seeing Lugar de Fala included in the admissions bibliography for USP’s graduate program in Human Rights shows how debates historically produced by Black and feminist movements are being recognized as fundamental to thinking about democracy, justice and the production of knowledge in Brazil,” says Djamila Ribeiro.

The author also emphasized the symbolic importance of the presence of Black women intellectuals in Brazilian academic spaces. “For a long time, Black women were excluded from universities not only as students and professors, but also as legitimate producers of theory. Seeing a work written from these experiences occupy this space is profoundly meaningful.”

Since its publication, Lugar de Fala has become one of the most influential works in the contemporary Brazilian debate on race, gender, epistemology and democracy, being adopted in courses and admissions processes at public and private universities in Brazil and abroad. Originally published in 2017, the book launched the Coleção Feminismos Plurais (Plural Feminisms Collection) and has sold hundreds of thousands of copies, establishing itself as an academic and political reference.

The news comes as Lugar de Fala receives a new revised and expanded edition from Rosa dos Tempos, an imprint of Grupo Editorial Record. The work, now expanded fourfold, is expected in early June and features a foreword by Nigerian writer Chimamanda Ngozi Adichie and an introduction by artist and thinker Grada Kilomba.

In the introduction, Grada Kilomba describes Djamila Ribeiro as “one of the most important and brilliant thinkers of our time,” stating that the author has come to occupy a place of speech in her “imaginary and real” world. The presence of Kilomba and Adichie in the new edition reinforces the book’s international dialogue with debates on race, gender, coloniality and the production of knowledge.

The book’s international circulation gained further prominence with its English-language edition, Where We Stand, published by Yale University Press, expanding the reach of Ribeiro’s reflections on knowledge, power, and social location to English-speaking academic and public debates. Yale University Press identifies Where We Stand as the English edition of Ribeiro’s work, translated by Padma Viswanathan.

When she conceived the Coleção Feminismos Plurais (Plural Feminisms Collection), Djamila Ribeiro identified as one of its goals bringing debates on different feminisms to the general public through didactic and accessible language, while also disseminating the intellectual production of historically marginalized groups as political subjects. The inclusion of Lugar de Fala in the bibliography of one of the country’s most traditional law schools materializes that project: diversifying curricula, displacing the canon and affirming Black intellectual production as an indispensable part of democratic education.

The full call for applications and the bibliography list can be consulted in the documents published by Fuvest.

Translated by AI