Yara Monteiro was born in Angola, but ended up growing up in Portugal, because she came here, as a baby, with her mother and maternal family. As an adult, she lived in Luanda, Copenhagen, Athens, Rio de Janeiro and London, until she returned, again, to Portugal, where she currently lives. During this journey, mainly in the time she spent in Brazil, in contact with identity affirmation social movements, she rouse to her blackness and started to describe herself as “great-great-granddaughter of slavery, great-granddaughter of miscegenation, granddaughter of independence and daughter of the diaspora”.
She has a degree in Human Resources and has worked in this area for fifteen years. Currently dedicated to visual arts and writing, she published Essa dama bate bué! in 2018, work that can be described as a contemporary feminist novel that addresses issues of gender, race, colonialism, identity and diaspora. She is also co-responsible for the Culture, Art and Shows department of the Instituto da Mulher Negra (INMUNE).
