"A gente combinamos de não morrer": the heteroglossic discourse on conceição Evaristo’s short story

Abstract

In this article, we present a brief theoretical and critical reading of the short story “A gente combinamos de não morrer”, which closes the harmonious set of fifteen narratives in the book Olhos d’água, published in 2014, by the contemporary Brazilian writer Conceição Evaristo (1946-). The author’s poetic writing in the text assembles possible worlds structured around trampled voices, in the category of “heteroglossia”, a concept developed from Mikhail Bakhtin’s (2011; 2015; 2016; 2023) philosophical and theoretical studies of the literature represented artistically, considered a living aesthetic event. When we read the heteroglossic discourse in the mentioned short story, it highlights expressively, the elements of ethnoracial, peripheral urban violence representativeness, as well as the problematization of black female authorship on and off the pages: themes regularly read on Conceição Evaristo’s writings, which are discussed in dialogue with Fernanda Miranda (2019), Regina Dalcastagné (2012), Gabriel Nascimento (2019), amidst other researchers.