Bodies of Water
by Paulo Ramos
Copublished with Counterpath
5.5 x 8.5, 133 pgs., $25
ISBN 978-1-962365-13-0
Forthcoming in 2026.
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Bodies of Water is a breath taken underwater. Bodies of Water is memory in motion, a current carrying the stories of Black women-mothers. It is the description of the poetic pluralities of Black women in their intellectualities as they experience the world, a world born from the relationships and socialities that emerge from these waters. The book Bodies of Water reveals itself through the wisdom of the mother, grandmother, aunt, and neighborhood women (mother-neighbors) of the author, who shared mothering and waters among themselves. It is these women and these waters that make us s(w)im-alk in the Black feeling-doing, rooted in an ancestry that flows from their wombs and hearts.
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Paulo Ramos is born from the womb of his mother, Terezinha Ramos de Jesus. He is an Afro-Brazilian visual artist, performer, actor, and poet whose multidisciplinary work spans video, performance, and poetry. His Corpos D'água was published in 2023, and he has performed at the At First Sigh New Works Festival at Indiana University and in venues across São Paulo and Tepoztlán, leading to the videoperformance Bodies of Water: Three buckets: a river, a mangrow, and a sean. Ramos holds a Ph.D. in Social Science in Gender and Black Studies from Pontifícia Universidade Católica de São Paulo, and he continues to explore and amplify the narratives of Afro-Brazilian identity.