A militant writing

ace, education and other inequalities in the short stories of Lima Barreto (1904-1922)

Abstract

The First Brazilian Republic announced equality, but maintained and deepened the social differences of a large part of the population. Lima Barreto (1881-1922), as a writer and novelist, sought to portray the social reality of Rio de Janeiro, in the process of becoming a republic, in a period of conservative and exclusionary reforms, in which the poor and blacks, like himself, did not have their rights guaranteed. The writer sought to denounce the prejudices he suffered through his writing, criticizing Brazilian society based on his own testimony and life experience. Thus, Lima Barreto's literary production can be characterized as an Afro-Brazilian literary discourse, and his writing has a militant and testimonial character. Considering the characteristics of Lima Barreto's writing, we seek to identify which factors of this new social and political organization were pointed out by the writer as reproducing and sustaining social and racial inequalities. The analysis focuses on eight short stories by Lima Barreto, including the autobiographical work Diário íntimo (1959), published between 1904 and 1922. The aim was to draw parallels between Lima Barreto's biography, his memoirs and short stories, and the historical-social moment in which the writer's literary discourse was produced. The study found that economic, regional and racial differences, access to formal education and scientific knowledge are considered by the novelist as factors that contributed to the reproduction and maintenance of social and racial inequalities during the First Republic.