As mulheres de Tijucopapo: Rísia e a resistência negra como crítica identitária

Abstract

This research allows us to reflect on Marilene Felinto’s writing as a challenge to a language expression that was, until then, one-sided, in which only one gender was placed as the protagonist, proving with her work As mulheres de Tijucopapo that it is possible to transpose minority subjects into Brazilian literature, opening up the creation of new territories and new subjectivities. Her opposition to the imposed hegemonic discourse is clear when she decides to write about a black, migrant, northeastern woman, placing her as the narrator-protagonist of a story that can clearly reflect her biography, because she is herself like Rísia – black, woman, migrant, northeastern; not to mention the speeches, actions and wars of her character that also recall her desires, her struggles and the will she demonstrates to fight against an unfavorable and oppressive system towards minorities, who are an integral part of the same bourgeois society that oppresses, mistreats and humiliates. The research understands that there is a literary work before and after Felinto; What precedes it deals with a predominantly white, male and elitist literature, where texts with female narrators, much less female protagonists, were not read; however, after Marilene Felinto, a change in color, gender and social class can be seen, which were very well defined by her. It can be said that literature often reflects the shadow of a society that silences, coerces and distances; that in Felinto's writing we have a stripping bare of this crude way of seeing “people”. However, the discussion is not to complain about social constraints, but to demonstrate the strength of an author who, with her writing, portrays life as it is, making everyone see a world around them that was covered by the dust of ignorance and prejudice. This research is structured as follows: after the first introductory chapter, we will discuss the authorship and criticism of criticism, a chapter in which different analyses of Felinto's work are presented. In the third chapter, we will discuss identity and the diaspora of identity, using Rísia, the protagonist, as the model under analysis. In the fourth chapter, we draw a parallel between Rísia and Macabéa, Clarice Lispector's protagonist. Finally, the fifth chapter presents the final considerations. The work presents a way of exposing absences felt by Rísia that are not only hers, but of an entire minority that resists. The study is strictly bibliographic in nature, based on a qualitative and critical-theoretical methodological approach. The theoretical contributions that guided the research were the contributions of Gayatri Spivak, Homi Bhabha, Luciano Justino, Regina Dalastagnè, Stuart Hall, among others.