Displays of hunger: scarcity and racialization in Carolina Maria de Jesus' novel "Pedaços da fome"

Abstract

In this essay, we intend to question the ways in which the so-called "life scarcity" was analyzed in sociology and statistics in the 1950s and 1960s, contrasting them with the representations made by Carolina Maria de Jesus in her novel Pedaços da fome. Understanding this work from its production context, we believe it is possible to analyze it also from the elaboration of a criticism against a social theory, which erased racial discussions about poverty. Therefore, the leading character of the novel, Maria Clara, would be a key for this reading, created by the author as a way to understand hunger and poverty in São Paulo in those times.