The present work proposes to analyse “Quarto de despejo”, a book by Brazilian writer Carolina Maria de Jesus, in the light of the notion of “escrevivência” (a neologism for writability and experience) as proposed by Evaristo (2007) and in the light of the testimonial genre, as proposed by Reis (2002) and Magnobosco (2002). Not only because both the notion of “escrevivência” and the testimonial genre characterize the writing of subaltern women, but because of the lack of works with both factors in mind in the academy. For this, we propose a
discussion about the female black literature and why this literature asks for these adjectives, besides denying the common theoretical-critical hegemony to conceptualize and analyze this work. For this purpose, we use Duarte (2005), Bonnici and Zolin (2009), Souza (2018), among other authors who discussed black and feminine literature and the literature that is both black and feminine and about the period in which the work was writen. We have been able to develop the analysis using the described factors, linking the “escrevivência” to the testimonial genre as a magnifying glass for the analysis.
