From the Source to the River Mouth: Critical Itinerary to Um rio sem fim (1998), by Verenilde Santos Pereira

Abstract

In the field of literary studies, the access to voice and to the power to represent oneself, regarding marginalized groups, such as indigenous ethnicities, has been an issue increasingly discussed - as in Dalcastagnè (2002) and Olivieri-Godet (2013), for example -, expanding what is understood by representation and representativeness in the arts. In this sense, the present article aims to analyze the novel Um rio sem fim (1998), by the journalist, indigenist, and Afro-indigenous writer Verenilde Santos Pereira (1956-), in view of the work's creation process and the representations of indigenous characters, especially the female ones. Whether from its genesis - since the work was originally part of the author's master's thesis - in which the question of the difference between literary and academic language is perceived, or through the representations of subalternized characters and the multiple violations they suffer, Verenilde Pereira's novel questions and reformulates the excluding and Eurocentric discourses about the other. It will be observed, during the analysis, how the author's conceptions about alterity and language influence, in this way, the representation of indigenous subjects and the construction of an involving, polyphonic and non-linear narrative.