CASA DE ALVENARIA: A DIARY ON THE INTELLECTUAL WORK AND THE MATERIAL RISE OF CAROLINA DE JESUS

Abstract

In this study, we read Casa de alvenaria: diário de uma ex-favelada, 1961, by the Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus, highlighting the sense of “scribe”, which Conceição Evaristo tells us about, when literature and life connect, establishing themselves a writing of yourself and others. The work tells the lives of many favela residents, and is a testament to the arduous lives of so many poor Brazilians. But the change in Carolina's life is also narrated, who, through writing and literate culture, leaves the favela and becomes a famous writer. Her account proves that reading and writing are sources of politicization and provide the writer's class and ethnic awareness. Material labor and intellectual labor are part of his life. The former is intertwined with the latter, constituting engaged prose and social denunciation. Real life and literary life are linked in an important and beautiful romanesque and sociological essay, presenting an interpretation of Brazil through the lens of a poor black woman. The writer highlights the contradictions that exist in each space, because both in the slum where she lived and in the middle class neighborhood to which she migrates and, also, in the high economic and intellectual spheres of society, there are fortunes and misfortunes. The work reinforces the certainty that books are important, since Carolina modifies her existence from the windows opened by the books she has read and which helped her to reflect more on her concrete existence. The real of its existence starts to be thought and written through its critical lenses. The literary word, then, renames the real, interpreting the contradictions of class and color present in Brazil.

Keywords: Brazilian Literature. Intellectual labor. Carolina Maria de Jesus. Casa de alvenaria: diário de uma ex-favelada.