Luakam Anambé wanted her newborn granddaughter to have a doll, and she wanted it to share their Indigenous features. But there was nothing like that in Brazilian stores. So she sewed one herself from cloth and stuffing, and a business idea was born.
Atyna Pora, of Brazil's Anambe indigenous group, clips the hair made of yarn of an indigenous doll, at a sewing workshop in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Tuesday, May 24, 2022. Pora and her mother Luakam Anambe who make the dolls bearing faces and body paints of different Indigenous groups, have sold more than 5,000 of their dolls.
A business idea was born, and her modest home now doubles as a workshop where she and her daughter produce dolls for a growing clientele. Anambé said she was 15 when the plantation owner forced her to marry his friend, a man two decades her senior, with whom she had a daughter. Anambé soon fled her violent husband, leaving her baby with family.
Her Indigenous features stood out in Rio, and she experienced prejudice. Eventually, she landed a job in a bikini factory and was able to send for her daughter, by then in her twenties. Little by little, they saved enough money to move from their one-room shack to a small home, where she started making clothes for some fashionable Rio brands. With the skills she developed sitting behind her sewing machine, she made her first doll.