Beyond testimony: an aesthetic-political intervention from the margins in the work Quarto de despejo. Diary of a woman who was hungry, by Carolina María de Jesús

Abstract

This article examines Carolina María de Jesús's Quarto despejo. Diario de una mujer que estaba hambre (1963) as a work that transcends the testimonial genre to become an aesthetic-political intervention. The study focuses on how a Black woman, a single mother living in favela, manages, through diary writing, to question the hierarchies of race, gender, and class in mid-20th-century Brazil and its subsequent reception. The main objective is to analyze how the author redefines testimony as an act of authorship and resistance, destabilizing the parameters of the literary canon. The hypothesis is that her diary not only documents poverty but also validates the production of knowledge from the margins, anticipating contemporary debates on subalternity and Black Feminism. The study concludes that Carolina María de Jesús's narrative, its subsequent silencing, and its reinterpretation by the Marginal Literature Movement and Black Feminism reveal the persistence of structural racism and the political power of subaltern voices.