Entre o lixo e a memória: uma análise dos diários de Indi e Carolina Maria de Jesus sob a perspectiva da História da Educação (1950)

Abstract

This article analyzes, from the perspective of the History of Education, two diaries produced during the 1950s: the unpublished manuscript by Indiara Artiaga, found in a discarded box in Uberlândia, and the work Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (original title: Quarto de Despejo), by Carolina Maria de Jesus. The research investigates how these records of ordinary writing function as historical sources capable of revealing dimensions of human experience that are absent from official documents. Methodologically, the study adopts Carlo Ginzburg’s evidential paradigm to interpret traces such as handwriting, drawings, and literary references found in the texts. While Indiara’s diary reflects the education of a young woman from the elite, proficient in foreign languages and with access to high culture, living in Uberlândia, Minas Gerais, during the 1950s, Carolina’s account exposes the hunger and social exclusion experienced by a Black woman living in the Canindé favela in São Paulo. The theoretical framework is based on Philippe Lejeune and Philippe Artières, whose works discuss the construction of subjectivity and the preservation of personal memory. The study demonstrates that education extends beyond the formal school environment, taking place through everyday practices of reading, writing, and political resistance. The comparison between the two life trajectories highlights the profound class and gender inequalities that characterized Brazilian society in the mid-twentieth century. It concludes that, despite their opposite documentary destinies—one being casually discarded and the other achieving editorial recognition—both diaries served as vital instruments of identity affirmation for their authors. Therefore, this research contributes to a historiography that is attentive to marginalized voices and to non-formal educational processes developed outside institutional settings. By bringing together these two distinct social realities, the study demonstrates the value of documentary traces in reconstructing women’s memories. The findings reinforce the fundamental role of autobiographical sources in promoting a plural and democratic understanding of the history of Brazilian education. Keywords: History of Education. Self-writing. Personal diaries