Race, gender, identity and decolonization in the writings of Carolina Maria de Jesus

• In Event: Discourses and Counter-Discourses of Gendered Race

Abstract

In her Letter to 3rd World women writers, Gloria Anzaldua reveals that the dangers women writers of color face are not the same as those of white women. Contemporary feminist literature studies show that, beyond what Virginia Woolf stated in her essay A rooms of one´s own, many women do not have the luxury of having help, a room, or some money. They are the help. And they write. Carolina de Jesus, black, poor, from slavery ancestry, is one of the most prominent Brazilian writers. Published in 1960, her first book, Quarto de Despejo, sold 10.000 copies when released, a record in Brazil. Her work was then translated to 14 languages and is continuously challenging for researchers focused on the Brazilian Literature produced in the second part of the 20th century. Through her writings, the reader enters a complex world where the search for identity and the complex relations between race, gender and class meet. I propose to discuss how her books, released from 1960 to 1980. They unfold not only the social problems of her country - faced with the legacy of colonialism, slavery and dictatorship - but a new unattended way of writing where literature patterns - based in European codes – are broken and reshaped. In order to study Carolina Maria de Jesus self-representation through her writings, we try to understand how women´s studies,centered in decolonization, as in Alzaldua and Segato, can illuminate the literary constructions of a black, poor, female writer in Brazil. We will also use Paul Ricoeur's identity studies.

Author

• Maria Clara B Machado Campello, Sorbonne Nouvelle - Paris 3 / Universidade de Brasília