The possible utopia

Estela sem Deus, by Jeferson Tenório as a formation romance

Abstract

Estela sem Deus, a work by Jeferson Tenório released in 2018 by publisher Zouk and re-released in 2022 by publisher Companhia das Letras, tells the story of Estela, a thirteen-year-old black girl, whose childhood cannot be full, as she needs to deal with the responsibilities of the world of work and survival. The plot follows the development of the character, from thirteen to sixteen years old, during the late 1980s and early 1990s, transiting between Rio Grande do Sul and Rio de Janeiro. Racial discrimination, gender violence, social prejudice, misery are some of the defined contours of his trajectory. In this work, we propose an analysis of the work relating the concept of Formation Novel, the Bildungsroman (MORETTI, 2020; LUKÁCS, 2000, PINTO, 1990). To do so, we will dialogue with other concepts such as space-metaphor (GULLÓN, 1980), Utopia (BENTIVOGLIO, 2020), and the female Bildungsroman (PINTO, 1990). Our goal is to characterize the way a character goes through a transformational journey during the narrative, which characterizes a Bildungsroman. However, Estela, being a young black woman, does not carry out a journey of perfect completion, with utopian contours, as in the novel of formation. The proposal to read this story as a novel about the formation of a young black woman presents a potential for bringing the work closer to young studies, allowing a dialogue with contemporaries of Brazilian youth literature.