ABSTRACT
This chapter describes the Brazilian contemporary fiction and reflects dilemmas of a society as it passes through hurried and radical transformations. It aims to participate in the openly political movement of criticism and legitimation. The chapter focuses on both the way "authorized" writers speak of marginalized persons, turning them into characters (or even narrators) of their texts, and the strategies used by authors originated in the margins the margins of the literary field to inscribe their perspectives and dictions in it. Literary regionalism is a very rich space for analyzing the representation of the other. The discussion developed in the chapter may suggest that depicting marginalized groups is an impossible job since the middle-class background of the writers—with all that is implied in terms of knowledge, sensibility, privileges and prejudices—creates an insurmountable obstacle between them and the universe of the poor surrounding them.
