Dialogue et hybridisme entre les œuvres de Françoise Ega et Carolina Maria de Jesus

Abstract

In Lettres à une Noire (1978), an epistolary novel that operates like a diary, written in the early 1960s, the protagonist writes letters to the Brazilian author Carolina Maria de Jesus. She is the author of the bestseller Quarto de despejo (1960) [Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus, 1962], which also has the structure of a diary and describes the daily life of a scrap collector living in the favela do Canindé in São Paulo. This paper aims to show the importance of the contact between these writers, as perceptible in the work of Françoise Ega. To this end, we first analyze Françoise Ega’s career and some of the particularities of her novel Lettres à une Noire. Next, we examine the hybridity of Ega’s novel, a feature of American discourse according to the Brazilian thinker Silviano Santiago, among others. Finally, we explore the dialogue between Lettres à une Noire and Child of the Dark. From this last step, we resume the debate on hybridism and Hispanic-Luso-French-American literature.

Keywords

• subalternity
• Françoise Ega
• Carolina Maria de Jesus
• subaltern
• hybridism