THE CONSTRUCTION OF BIOGRAPHICAL NARRATIVE IN “MARIA BONITA: SEX, VIOLENCE AND WOMEN IN THE CANGAÇO”, BY ADRIANA NEGREIROS

Abstract

Maria de Déa, popularly known as Maria Bonita, is a historical figure of great prominence in the context of the Brazilian cangaço. In this sense, Adriana Negreiros (2020) chooses to rewrite the history not only of Maria Déa, but also of several women who were forced to participate in the cangaço. Thus, the work Maria Bonita: sex, violence, and women in the cangaço emerges to offer voice to previously discredited and/or oppressed accounts. Furthermore, it is observed that this book fits into Literary Journalism, a genre that converges facts from reality and strategies from literature - such as narration, the construction of characters and stylistic resources. Thus, the objectives are to investigate the construction of the biographical narrative in the book-reportage Maria Bonita: sex, violence and women in the cangaço, by Adriana Negreiros; to establish the contours of what is the book-reportage in relation to the fictional; to analyze the narrative focus of the work in question; to scrutinize the specificities of the construction of the character Maria Bonita. Thus, we used a qualitative and bibliographic methodology, since both allow a better analysis of the theories and corpus selected.

Keywords: Literary journalism; Fiction; Biography.