Chapter 5 - Struggle at the Margins: Intersections of Gender, Race, and Sexuality in Brazil’s Literature of Revolution

Summary

In the final years of Brazil’s military dictatorship, as the nation inched toward democratic transition, a new genre emerged on the literary landscape: autobiographical accounts penned by survivors of the armed struggle waged between 1969 and 1973. The most widely read works of this literature of revolution are memoirs that present strikingly similar portraits of Brazilian revolutionaries as straight, white men, with at least two notable exceptions: Passagem para o próximo sonho (1982) by Herbert Daniel (who recounts what it was like to be a gay militant) and Revolta das vísceras (1982) by Mariluce Moura (who recounts her experience as a Black heterosexual woman in a clandestine revolutionary organization). Both writers blend autobiography and fiction to produce innovative accounts about how sex informed their political trajectories, and how politics shaped them as sexual beings. The two books are among the few revolutionary works that lend themselves to an intersectional analysis of Brazil’s clandestine left. They also stand out as critical interventions in debates over the nation’s protracted transition to civilian democracy.