Abre a roda, chegou Madureira: novas cartografias literárias em A lua triste descamba, de Nei Lopes

Abstract

Although samba and carnival nowadays constitute a large part of Brazilian culture, their Afro-Brazilian and popular roots have been erased and/or neglected in different areas of our society. In literatus hegemonic fields, when we search for simple keywords such as “carioca suburb” or “outskirts”, few authors have come close to the limits of Madureira and its surroundings, despite the enormous social diversity that the neighborhood has at its core and the influence of its characters for our cultural expressions. Thus, despite the countless musical records that portray the suburbs in Rio de Janeiro, literary investigations of this topic are still scarce. Subverting this contradiction, A lua triste descamba, by Nei Lopes (2012), discusses suburban social relations, drawing the attention to the need to represent and establish a place for the subalternized subjects and their cultures, as well as to create spaces of resistance with the support of the literary field. This dissertation analyzes Lopes’ novel with the help of history, taking literature in the expanded way, approaching cultural phenomena in these new geographic spaces no quite enough represented, where Madureira emerges as a privileged place for these discussions.