Feminine Backlands: Women in the Regionalist Fiction of Maria Valéria Rezende and Itamar Vieira Junior
Regionalism, Gender, Space, Outros cantos, Crooked Plow.
This research aims to investigate the representation of female characters in contemporary regionalist fiction by examining the works Outros Cantos (2016) by Maria Valéria Rezende and Crooked Plow (2019) by Itamar Vieira Junior. Therefore, the study seeks to examine how these works represent female spaces in the sertão, based on the relationships constructed between the characters Maria and Fátima in Outros Cantos, and Bibiana and Belonísia in Crooked Plow. The research also explores the configuration of current regionalism, interpreting it through the lens of female representation and gender issues in contemporary times. The research is essentially bibliographical and is based on the studies of Antonio Candido (2011), José Maurício Gomes de Almeida (1999), Juliana Santini (2009; 2014; 2018), Ligia Chiappini (1994; 1995; 2013), and Marisa Lajolo (2003), as well as the reflections of Judith Butler (2022), Michel Foucault (2020), Pierre Bourdieu (2019), and Teresa de Lauretis (1994) on gender issues. Preliminary results indicate that the representation of women reveals a new modulation of the regionalist tradition, in which female characters gain a voice to narrate their lives and fight against the forms of oppression present in the spaces they inhabit.