“The stars, will they speak?” Listening to Carolina Maria de Jesus’s voice

Abstract

Based on the biography of Carolina Maria de Jesus I have authored, Carolina Maria de Jesus. Nas Margens da Literatura (Lisboa 2020), this article is an introduction to the Brazilian writer, who was born in Sacramento, in 1914, and died in Parelheiros (São Paulo), in 1977.

Carolina was one of the first Black voices within the favelas to be heard, denouncing class, race and gender injustices and discriminations. The success, fulminant and ephemeral, occurred in 1960 with the publication of her first diary Quarto de Despejo, but Brazilian dictatorship and mass media oblivion left her, once again, in isolation. She wrote several books: diaries, poems, and novels. Representative of Literatura Marginal and pioneer of the subsequent Literatura Periférica, she was accused of “being a bad writer”, becoming, however, an example of how the literary canon should be, nowadays, discussed and reconsidered.