"Becos da Memória", by Conceição Evaristo: Writing the Memory of the Afro-Brazilian Woman

• In Event: This is America: Re-creating Afro-Diasporic Contemporary Literary and Cultural Discourses

Abstract

In the novel Becos da Memória, Conceição Evaristo weaves many stories into one narrative where she introduces the mundane reality of a favela that is about to be taken down in order to make way for the modernization of a central area of the Brazilian city of Belo Horizonte. The protagonist, a black girl child named Maria Nova, is continuously observing her surroundings and people in her community come to her to tell her their memories. Such empathy for their stories turns her into a key participant in her community and saddens her in watching the dismantling of her home: the favela. My presentation questions in what way the memory of black Brazilian women is built in an urban context of the 80s, where poverty and marginalization affect the majority of the black communities. I argue that Maria Nova and her community’s memories are the resources she has to write her self through her practice of escrevivência (a process in which black women's stories and bodies are self represented in Brazilian literature). In writing her self, Maria Nova inserts her community and their stories into an alternative History, written from the perspective of the Afro-Brazilian female experience.

Author

• Eliza Araújo