Domestic Servants in Literature and Testimony in Brazil,

Transcription

1 Domestic Servants in Literature and Testimony in Brazil,

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3 Domestic Servants in Literature and Testimony in Brazil, S ô nia Roncador

4 DOMESTIC SERVANTS IN LITERATURE AND TESTIMONY IN BRAZIL, Copyright S ô nia Roncador, Softcover reprint of the hardcover 1st edition All rights reserved. First published in 2014 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN in the United States a division of St. Martin s Press LLC, 175 Fifth Avenue, New York, NY Where this book is distributed in the UK, Europe and the rest of the world, this is by Palgrave Macmillan, a division of Macmillan Publishers Limited, registered in England, company number , of Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS. Palgrave Macmillan is the global academic imprint of the above companies and has companies and representatives throughout the world. Palgrave and Macmillan are registered trademarks in the United States, the United Kingdom, Europe and other countries. ISBN DOI / ISBN (ebook) Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data is available from the Library of Congress. A catalogue record of the book is available from the British Library. Design by Newgen Knowledge Works (P) Ltd., Chennai, India. First edition: February

5 Contents Acknowledgments vii Introduction One Two Three Four The Burdened Legacy of Domestic Servitude in Brazil 1 J ú lia s Maids: Servants in the Cultural Imaginary of the Tropical Belle É poque 23 My Ol Black Mammy : Childhood Maids in Brazilian Modernist Memoirs 69 How to Treat a Maid? : Misencounters with Servants in Clarice Lispector s Journalism 117 Writers in Aprons: Brazilian Servants Testimonios 153 Notes 189 Works Cited 215 Index 235

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7 Acknowledgments This study is an expanded, translated version of my book A dom é s- tica imagin á ria: literatura, testemunhos, e a inven çã o da empregada dom é stica no Brasil ( ) (University of Brasilia Press, 2008). As I tailored each chapter and wrote a new introduction for a non-brazilian audience, the substantial revising and editing process resulted in a more challenging and for this very reason highly enriching experience for me. To the many people who supported this project and contributed to its completion, I would like to express my most heartfelt appreciation. I am particularly indebted to the University of Texas at Austin (UT Austin), especially to the College of Liberal Arts, the Office of the Vice President for Research, the Lozano Long Institute of Latin American Studies (LLILAS), and the Department of Spanish and Portuguese, for the money and research leave they provided me with over the last few years. Special thanks go to my colleagues in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese at UT Austin. I would like to begin by thanking Leopoldo Bernucci and Nicolas Shumway, for their guiding input at the earliest stage of the project. I also wish to acknowledge the help, guidance, and encouragement given to me at different moments and in different ways by Jossianna Arroyo- Mart í nez, Naomi Lindstrom, H é ctor Dominguez-Ruvalcaba, Marta Ortega-Llevaria, Arturo Arias, Jill Robbins, Cesar Salgado, Gabriela Polit-Due ñ as, Vivian Flanzer, and Lorraine Leu. The helpful assistance of my department s and LLILAS s staff also facilitated my occasional encounters with institutional bureaucracy. In addition, I owe a debt of gratitude to my LLILAS colleagues, in particular Charlie Hale, Juliet Hooker, Fernando Lara, Leticia Marteleto, Christen Smith, Seth Garfield, and Joe Straubhaar, all of whom contributed to this study at its various stages. Last but certainly not least, I would like to thank my students over the years, and would like to express my special gratitude to Joe Pierce, Dusty Hixenbaugh, and John Destafney for their careful proofreading and insightful critical comments on my work. I also would like to acknowledge the inspirational in-class discussions and countless one-on-one conversations with Jo ã o Valentino Alfredo, Eliseo Jacob, Erin Redmond, Lanie Millar, Anne Katsnelson, Adriana Pacheco, and Amy Olen.

8 viii Acknowledgments The following readers and interlocutors engaged with my research in crucial and profound ways. I am deeply thankful to Peggy Sharpe (Florida State University), Idelber Avelar (Tulane University), Pedro Meira Monteiro (Princeton University), and Severino Albuquerque (University of Wisconsin Madison) for their thorough reading and generous feedback on this work at different phases (or even different languages!); my deepest gratitude goes to Marta Peixoto (New York University) for her long-standing scholarly and professional mentorship and shared affinities; many thanks to my friend and exemplar scholar Micol Seigel (Indiana University Bloomington) for sharing with me her excellent research on US and Brazilian mammies; and I am especially grateful to May Bletz for her wise editorial guidance as well as important input on my chapter about J ú lia Lopes de Almeida and to Paula Azevedo for her skillful translation of parts of the manuscript. I also wish to acknowledge my fruitful interactions with Joaze Bernardino Costa (University of Bras í lia) and Marie Francois (California State University Channel Islands) at conference panels and through their writings on domestic service. Finally, my sincere thanks to the organizers of the research group Writings of Violence, namely, Marcio Seligmann-Silva (University of Campinas), Francisco Foot-Hartman (University of Campinas), and Jaime Ginzburg (University of S ã o Paulo), and the productive and enjoyable meetings we had. I am very thankful for the spot-on assessment and editing suggestions given to me by my manuscript s reviewers, as well as the extremely competent and helpful editors of Palgrave Macmillan. The original versions of the first sections of Chapter One appeared, respectively, as Hist ó rias paran ó icas, criados perversos no imagin á rio liter á rio da Belle É poque tropical, in Estudos de literatura brasileira contempor â nea 29 (January June 2007): ; as As criadas de J ú lia, in Portuguese Literary and Cultural Studies 12 (2007): ; and as O dem ô nio familiar: lavadeiras, amas-deleite e criadas na narrativa de J ú lia Lopes de Almeida, in Luso- Brazilian Review 44.1 (Spring 2007): An initial version of Chapter Two appeared as A m ã e-preta de Freyre e Lins do Rego, in the Revista de Cr í tica Literaria Latinoamericana (2007): ; a previous version of this chapter s second section came out as Precocious Boys: Race and Sexual Desire in Carlos Drummond de Andrade s Autobiographical Poems, in Afro-Hispanic Review 27.2 (Fall 2008): Finally, an earlier version of Chapter Four was published as Da solidariedade ao respeito: notas sobre viol ê n- cia sexual na literatura de testemunho de empregadas dom é sticas,

9 Acknowledgments ix in Escritas da viol ê ncia: O testemunho, ed. Marcio Seligmann-Silva et al., , Rio de Janeiro: 7 Letras, I am most grateful to the maid authors and activists whom I read and interviewed in Brazil: Lenira Carvalho, Francisca Souza da Silva, Rosalina Ferreira Basseti, and Creuza Maria de Oliveira. Their testimonios inspired me to carry out this project. Special thanks and admiration go to Arlete Maria Macedo da Silva. I would also like to express special thanks to my mother-in-law, Martha Borge, for her genuine interest in my research topic, and for lending me the ideal place in which to pacify my inner demons. Finally, words cannot possibly express the depth of my gratitude to my family in Brazil. To my darling mother Odette Rezende Roncador, my sister Silvia Maria Roncador, and my brother Sergio Roberto Roncador, my heartfelt thanks for their intellectual and emotional support, generosity, and selfless solidarity during the writing process. Obrigada pela for ç a. I dedicate this book to my beloved husband, best friend, and adviser, Jason Borge.