Uma autobiografia operária: a memória entre a entrevista e o romance

Abstract

IN THIS article is presented and analysed a rare ficional worker's autobiography given to the anthropologists after interviews in fieldwork done in the company-town located at the city of Paulista, Pernambuco. In spite of the use of fables and metaphors that are common to the literary genre for loud voice lecture, as cordel, the author masters an elaborate narrative with three versions of the same story, seen by three characters, with some mysteries and surprises: only in the middle of the text the reader perceives that it is an autobiography. Through fictional narrative of his living history, the author describes his rural origins and the importance of some members of his family unit in his childhood and youth; all non revealed aspects in the interviews that focused in his recent industrial work participation. The experience of migration to metropolitan centres, the diversity of industrial jobs, the relation to lecture and self-instruction, the position of youngest between brothers, are all factors, as show other working-class autobiographies seen in international comparison, to explain this reflexive written work about the past and about social origins.