Sobre-vivência(s): travessias de (re)conhecimento(s) na escrita diaspórica de Chimamanda Adichie, Julia Alvarez e Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

This dissertation studies the way in which the Nigerian writer Chimamanda Adichie (1977 – ), the Dominican-American Julia Alvarez (1950 – ) and the African-Brazilian Conceição Evaristo (1946 – ) deal with the cultural, political, social and economic dislocation lived by their female characters. Such dislocations foster the comprehension of the manner in which the characters identities are configured after being subjected, voluntarily or not, to geographical dislocations that, as consequence, promote the knowledge and recognition of the characters as modern world women. The dislocations experienced by the characters Ifemelu, Yolanda and Ponciá, from the books Americanah (2014a), How the García Girls Lost their Accents (1991) and ¡Yo! (1997), and also Ponciá Vicêncio (2003), by Chimamanda Adichie, Julia Alvarez and Conceição Evaristo, respectively, are used as an illustration of one of the most recurrent procedures of humanity: the act of moving. In this regard, writing about diasporic storylines, when representing both the feeling of not belonging and the deterritorialization of their characters, induces writing to become an act of resistance, since one cannot resist to tell stories about the unique experience of women that resembles the collective experience of their transience. Therefore, this work provides a comparative study between the literary craft of the writers aiming to examine how the women represented in their novels, as well as the authors themselves, handle their diasporic condition and reflect associated concepts in the novels, such as gender, identification and ethnic-racial questions. The fictional narratives discussed aim to provide voice to subaltern women in a new geographic location, in addition to problematize the gender configurations from the characters travelled paths. Thus, the positioning of the characters from the novels was examined according to their diasporic condition, as well as investigate their identification as women of color as well as dislocated women. For this purpose, the narrative thread focused on the plurality of perspectives aiming to perform a comparative approach of the adichian, alvarezial and evaristian characters survival after their forced or not dislocation, as well as the possible redefinition of identity when examining their effort to recognize and discover themselves in a new place. The works of Audre Lorde (1979), Avtar Brah (1996), Aníbal Quijano (2000), Chérrie Moraga (1983), Djamila Ribeiro (2018), Glória Anzaldúa (1983, 1987), Jurema Werneck (2000), Maria Lugones (2008), Patricia Collins (2003), Paul Gilroy (1993), Salman Rushdie (1990), Sueli Carneiro (2011), Stuart Hall (2003), Walter Mignolo (2013a, 2013b, 2013c, 2017) were used along with other contributions that were fundamental to finish this research.