Do Quarto de despejo aos Becos da memória: espaços de dor e resistência em Carolina Maria de Jesus e Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

Our objective is a comparative study between Quarto de Despejo: diário de uma favelada (1960), by Carolina Maria de Jesus and Becos da Memória (2006), by Conceição Evaristo, two black Brazilian writers. This study examines the representations of slum, a common space in both literary books. We intend to understand how slum emerges as a space of affection or disaffection and belonging or not belonging for people who live there. There is a process of slum extinction in progress in Becos da Memória while there is as an insistent narrator’s desire to leave this space in Quarto de Despejo. We will try to understand how this occurs, its reasons, and its consequences for characters’ lives. In the case of Carolina de Jesus, we will extend our study to Casa de Alvenaria (1961-2021), because this book contains her history after she left slum. It was a deep and repeated desire confessed by the writer-narrator throughout her speech in Quarto de Despejo. We will also bring to light her experience in privileged spaces of the city, as the famous writer she would become with the publication of her first Diary. The concept of "escrevivência" conceived by Conceição Evaristo will help our reading, because it defends lived experience as a starting point for literature produced by black women, as it also reaches the collective experience of black people. Therefore, we will also observe how writing is used by these women as an instrument of resistance and confrontation everyday obstacles. Their texts denounce violence and negligence not only against themselves but also the black and poor populations that live in slums. Our discussion will dialogue with Humanist Geography studies, which, based on concepts such as space and place, topophilia, and topophobia, they propose an approach to people's relationships with lived space. Studies about favelas produced by subjects such as Architecture and Urban Planning and Sociology will be accessed and they will help our reflection about slum as a space still seen through the lens of prejudice and discrimination.