A mulher (in)visível: o racismo em Diário de Bitita de Carolina Maria de Jesus

Abstract

This research aims to reflect on racism and the representation of black women in African Brazilian literature authored by women, with an emphasis on the work Bitita’s diary by Carolina Maria de Jesus. The research analyzes the consequences of stereotypical representations that, for a long time, disregarded black women as political and intellectual subjects, denying them the right to author their own narrative. By examining the trajectory of the writer from Sacramento, both in the literary field and in her testimonial works, we seek to highlight her breaking with the historical silence imposed on black women, emphasizing her voice as an instrument of denunciation and resistance. As a theoretical-critical framework, with regard to the debate on racism and its reverberations in the reading of the work, we mobilize intellectuals such as Muniz Sodré (2000, 2023), Maxmiliano Martins Pinheiro (2021), bell hooks (2010), Cida Bento (2022), Patricia de Paula Aniceto (2022), Simone Gibran Nogueira (2021, 2022) and Elisa Larkin Nascimento (2003). For the analysis of editorial practices and social contexts that enabled the emergence, production, and circulation of short story and novel collections by Black Brazilian authors, we will use the contributions of the authors Anna Faedrich (2022), Maria Daniely Souza Lima and Vitória Gomes Almeida (2018), Luiz Silva, known by the pseudonym Cuti, professor and researcher Eduardo de Assis Duarte (2011), López Winne and Malumián (2016), Luiz Henrique Silva de Oliveira and Fabiane Cristine Rodrigues (2016), Luciana Paiva Coronel (2011), Deise Quintiliano Pereira (2019), and we conclude with the observations of Regis Gomes Gonçalves (2024). With regard to the trajectory of the writer from Sacramento, and the points in common with the black feminist movement and contemporary women writers, we used as theoretical support the reflections of some Brazilian black intellectuals responsible for the constitution of this movement and who articulate race, gender and class: Cidinha da Silva and Stephanie Ribeiro (2018), Marília Novais da Mata Machado (2006), Carla Akotirene (2019), Carolina Maria de Jesus herself and Professor José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy (1998). Finally, all those whose reflections contribute to the understanding of the dynamics of racism and the disputes in the literary field. In short, the study aims to bring to the center of the debate the historical debt of literature, academia, and feminism to black women writers, considering that, for a long time, literary production contributed to the silencing of the black population, reproducing, on a symbolic level, the hierarchies of a racist, sexist, and patriarchal society, in which black authorship was frequently mediated or usurped by other voices.