Volto semana que vem

Memories of female resilience in prison

Abstract

The 20th century in Central and Latin America was marked by authoritarianism arising from dictatorial governments that rose to power in many countries in these regions. In Brazil, the regime was implemented in 1964 and left a trail of physical and symbolic violence that remains in contemporary times. The fiftieth anniversary of the coup d’état that put the military in power, together with the end of the work of the National Truth Commission, boosted the production of narratives on the subject. Many of these authors who have been published in recent years are women who were directly or indirectly affected by past events. Among the productions of these women, we highlight the novel by Maria Pilla, Volto Semana que vem (2015a), which brings together memories organized in a disarranged way about their childhood, youth, involvement with militancy, and consequent exile and imprisonment in Argentina. Although the prison is characterized as a dark space that restricts freedom, Pilla focuses on the relationships established with her companions in captivity and their survival strategies. Thus, we analyzed the topic of recording memories that relate to female resilience in prison. In this path, drawing mainly on the research by Eurídice Figueiredo (2017) on the subject, we briefly reflect on the literary production on the dictatorship of recent years, we read Pilla’s novel, we analyze the issue of a female prison in the narrative, we think about the meaning of the work in the context in which it was produced, understanding it, like Figueiredo (2017) as a possibility of archiving our dictatorial past.