ABSTRACT

When Brazil was honored at the Frankfurt Book Fair in 2013, the Brazilian author Luiz Ruffato opened the event with a provocative speech claiming that literature, through its pervasive depiction and discussion of ‘otherness,’ has the potential to provoke ethical transformation. This book uses Ruffato’s speech as a starting point for the discussion of contemporary Brazilian literature that stands in contrast to the repetition of social and cultural clichés. By illuminating the relevance of humanities and literature as a catalyst for rethinking Brazil, the book offers a resistance to the official discourses that have worked for so long to conceal social tensions, injustices, and secular inequities in Brazilian society. In doing so, it situates Brazilian literature away from the exotic and peripheral spectrum, and closer to a universal and more relevant ethical discussion for readers from all parts of the world. The volume brings together fresh contributions on both canonical contemporary authors such as Graciliano Ramos, Rubem Fonseca, and Dalton Trevisan, and traditionally silenced writing subjects such as Afro-Brazilian female authors. These essays deal with specific contemporary literary and social issues while engaging with historically constitutive phenomena in Brazil, including authoritarianism, violence, and the systematic violation of human rights. The exploration of diverse literary genres -- from novels to graphic novels, from poetry to crônicas -- and engagement with postcolonial studies, gender studies, queer studies, cultural studies, Brazilian studies, South American literature, and world literature carves new space for the emergence of original Brazilian thought.

chapter |10 pages

Introduction

On Behalf of the “Here and Now” 1

chapter 3|9 pages

Memorials of Words

The Victim in Brazilian Literature

chapter 4|16 pages

Deciphered Brazil and Enigma Brazil

Notes on Social Exclusion and Violence in Contemporary Brazilian Literature

chapter 5|18 pages

Journeys of Resistance in Afro-Brazilian Literature

The Case of Conceição Evaristo

chapter 6|18 pages

Growing Up to Human Rights

The Bildungsroman and the Discourse of Human Rights in Um defeito de cor

chapter 7|18 pages

Narrating other Perspectives, Re-Drawing History

The Protagonization of Afro-Brazilians in the Work of Graphic Novelist Marcelo d’Salete

chapter 8|21 pages

Neither Here nor There

Unsettling Encounters in Paulo Scott’s Habitante irreal

chapter 9|20 pages

Can’t You Hear My Call?

The Guarani Kaiowá Letter and the Right to Land and Literature in Brazil

chapter 10|18 pages

In Search of a New Invisibility

chapter 11|17 pages

Revisions of Masculinity under Dictatorship

Gabeira, Caio and Noll

chapter 12|10 pages

Testimonial Performance

Fictions of the Real in Contemporary Art

chapter 13|16 pages

Lyrical Guides to the Peripheries of Rio de Janeiro

Two Historical Moments

chapter 15|19 pages

The Night Explodes in the Cities

Three Hypotheses about Vinagre: uma antologia de poetas neobarracos