Subaltern Writings ─ Readings on Graciliano Ramos's Novels

"Subaltern" does not imply "inferior." Instead, it is a theory and a mode of expression that is different. Rocha (Portuguese, Middlebury College) uses it in his reading of one of the most important Brazilian novelists of the first half of the twentieth century, Graciliano Ramos, calling on how Ramos describes his terms rather than relying upon theoretical foundations. What comes across as fragmentary, or mere not-talking, was actually a sophisticated method of transmission; had its subject been European, it would have been accepted as whole. Reading the novel Caetes, Rocha finds the "homemade Indian" writing, graphic and real death, turns to an unending primitivism. In Angustia, Roche finds that instead of an untutored note-taker, Ramos is a sophisticated tracer of speech, Rocha finds further clues amongst the bulls and goats, "lullabying" modernist sublation, and the death of the poet becoming the birth of the domestic voice. He also notes the subtle ways of the looming revolution, a solitary act that comes before the letter of the law, and other subaltern viventes. As a result, Rocha takes us another step toward the true nature of the "subaltern." Annotation c2013 Book News, Inc., Portland, OR (booknews.com)

Fernando de Sousa Rocha received his PhD in comparative literature from the University of Southern California, Los Angeles. Dr. Rocha is currently Assistant Professor of Portuguese at Middlebury College and has been the recipient of the Ada Howe Kent grant. His latest publications are ?Recovering Voices: The Popular Music Ear in Late Nineteenth and Early Twentieth-Century Brazil? in Media, Sound, and Culture in Latin America and the Caribbean (edited by Alejandra Bronfman and Andrew Grant Wood) as well as the articles A conexao Alencar-Freyre: ‘comos’ e ‘porques’ em duas narrativas de formacao (2012) and ‘Tudo cato’: as formas do circular no diario Quarto de despejo de Carolina Maria de Jesus (2011).