Literature as an act of resistance in “O sagrado pão dos filhos”, by Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

Conceição Evaristo is an Afro-Brazilian writer of great relevance in the current Brazilian scenario. She has contributed for building a resistance literature focused on ethno-racial and gender issues, in an intersectional movement which also includes the class category. Her literary production, in general, is guided by her experience as a black woman, submitted to various subaltern conditions in Brazil and by evoking the memory of her African ancestors as a way of constructing a counter-discourse about the black struggle in the country. This paper presents a comprehension discourse of the short story “O sagrado pão dos filhos”, from the book Histórias de leves enganos e parecenças, which resulted from our reading and interpretation of this text and from the experience of a shared reading in a reading circle at Memórias de Baobá, an even held in the city of Fortaleza, Brazil. Literary criticism, Bakhtinian approach of language as well as French discourse analysis were used as basis for the literary analysis of the short story. “O sagrado pão dos filhos” was perceived in its complex aesthetic texture revealing how literature builds the human, setting up a decolonial gesture, echoing silent voices that are subjacent to the racial process of economic and symbolic subalternization.