O CÉU PARA OS BASTARDOS (2023), DE LILIA GUERRA: um olhar interseccional sobre a literatura afrobrasileira contemporânea

Abstract

This research, developed within the scope of the Institutional Program of Scientific Initiation Scholarships at UFMS (PIBIC 2024–2025), analyzes the novel O céu para os bastardos (2023), by Lilia Guerra, through an interdisciplinary dialogue between History and Literature, with emphasis on the perspective of intersectionality. A Black, peripheral, and São Paulo–born writer, Guerra constructs a narrative marked by social tensions related to race, gender, class, generation, and territoriality, highlighting the lived experiences of historically marginalized subjects. The research was developed in dialogue with the historian's method, which articulates contrast, juxtaposition, and dialectical interpretation between text and context, expanding this approach based on the theoretical contributions of Antônio Candido, Stuart Hall, Gayatri Spivak, Frantz Fanon, and bell hooks. The research procedures included textual analysis of O céu para os bastardos, systematic readings, note-taking, documentary investigation, and an extensive bibliographical review on intersectionality, literature, peripheral literature, and gender studies. The results reveal that Guerra’s narrative mobilizes aesthetic strategies that internalize social elements of the contemporary urban periphery, exposing mechanisms of oppression historically structured by sexism, racism, and class inequalities. The characters—especially Black and poor women—embody both everyday violence and forms of resistance and autonomy. By representing these subalternized and silenced bodies, the novel demonstrates how multiple social markers intersect to shape specific experiences of domination, confirming the analytical importance of intersectionality. Thus, the study concludes that Guerra’s work shows how literature can function as an instrument of social denunciation and transformation. By giving visibility to marginalized subjects, the author challenges hegemonic discourses and proposes new possibilities of representation. The research reinforces the relevance of intersectional approaches in literary criticism, demonstrating that systems of oppression do not operate in isolation, but in an intertwined manner. Intersectionality as an analytical tool is seen as one of the ways to confront multiple and overlapping oppressions, thus constituting an instrument of political struggle. In this context, the research contributes to broadening the understanding of the role of History and Literature in the construction of plural and emancipatory narratives in contemporary Brazil.