Writing without ground: literature by female authors in Brazil between 1955 and 1965

Abstract

This work is part of a project that starts with the attempt to establish connections between the works of the writers Anajá Caetano, Adelaide Carraro, Carolina Maria de Jesus, Cassandra Rios, Clarice Lispector, Maria Alice Barroso, and Maura Lopes Cançado, published between 1955 and 1966, aiming at other critical readings of the country and the world that also enact other political and aesthetic geographies, as proposed in the symposium “A malungagem e o brutalismo: Outros modos da margem na literatura e na cultura brasileiras”. The books in question are: “Os posseiros” (1955) Maria Alice Barroso, Pedaços da fome (1963) by Carolina Maria de Jesus, Negra Efigênia, a paixão do senhor branco (1965) by Anajá Caetano, Hospício é deus: diário I (1966) by Maura Lopes Cançado, A maçã no escuro (1961) by Clarice Lispector, Tara (1961) by Cassandra Rios, and A falência das elites (1963) by Adelaide Carraro. Rediscovering this writings prompts us to ask the following questions: living in a country still marked by large landholdings, segregation, and violence, what is it that we cannot imagine? What are the stories that we still don’t know how to tell? How has literature, written by women, historically confronted these blind spots of the imagination, reinventing modes of writing and ways of touching reality, naming that for which it is sometimes difficult to find words?