Protest scream

The voice of the black woman in Quarto de despejo – diário de uma favelada, by Carolina Maria de Jesus

Abstract

Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) started attending school at the age of seven, when a wealthy farmer decided to pay for the study of some poor children in the neighborhood where he lived. He learned to read and write and stopped studying in the second year. In Quarto de despejo - diary of a favela, he portrays, in an autobiographical way, the daily life in the São Paulo favela between 1955 and 1960. By writing a diary and using simple language, he tries to vent and expose the regrets and sadness of his life slum-black woman. Thus, it is intended to investigate the extent to which Literature constitutes a source of research for understanding the historical-social reality experienced by black women and slums in Brazil. The qualitative bibliographic study was based on theoretical contributions from critics such as Raymond Williams (1969), Jaques Le Goff (2003) and Gayatri Spivak (2010). The result reveals that, despite misery and marginalization, black women can build a space in which they have a voice.