On the social level, effective political accountability is equally indispensable in the creation of public policies to promote culture and the arts that combat exclusion and segregation, with structural effects on the lives of racialized populations, and not merely symbolic programs that are photogenic enough for reports. In this debate, we proposed to better understand some aspects of Afro-diasporic production in the fields of literature, film, and music, with special attention to women’s perspectives. Given the lack of historical documentation, it is often necessary to work with absences. As a research approach, the interrogative formulation—which acknowledges gaps that cannot always be filled — allows us to keep asking: what did they say? What did they do? What do we still not know? And perhaps also the central question: why did it take us so long to listen?
On the social level, effective political accountability is equally indispensable in the creation of public policies to promote culture and the arts that combat exclusion and segregation, with structural effects on the lives of racialized populations, and not merely symbolic programs that are photogenic enough for reports. In this debate, we proposed to better understand some aspects of Afro-diasporic production in the fields of literature, film, and music, with special attention to women’s perspectives. Given the lack of historical documentation, it is often necessary to work with absences. As a research approach, the interrogative formulation—which acknowledges gaps that cannot always be filled — allows us to keep asking: what did they say? What did they do? What do we still not know? And perhaps also the central question: why did it take us so long to listen? 
