A enxada e a caneta : uma pesquisadora do interior em seu compreender-se mediadora de leitura.

Abstract

This study, which began with my desire to help young people from my community, through reading literary works, to have a first contact with feminist theories well before the contact I had, only in postgraduate studies, also encompasses the my process of “realizing” that reading mediation is not practiced only with my will and by the act of presenting books to students. At work, I dared, for the first time, amid trial and error, to experience the functions of a professional mediator through the project I called “Young people read the world: gender inequality and its challenges”. I was with a group of young students from the 9th year of elementary school, from the Escola Municipal de Ensino Fundamental (EMEF) Coronel Thomaz Pereira, a school in the town where I live, Linha Taquari Mirim, in the interior of the city of Venâncio Aires, state of Rio Grande do Sul. South, Brazil. Through this project, for ten days, 17 other students and I lived, talked, asked questions, shared and read literary texts of different genres. about what it means to be a woman and what it means to be a man in the place where they live and from my first experience in mediating readings, I describe, throughout the text, the experiences resulting from joint learning, mine and the students. Along with this, I also briefly rescue historical aspects of the school participating in the project, and consequently, of the community where it is located. Suzana Albornoz (2008), Virginia Woolf (2014), Antonio Candido (1995), Silvia Castrillón (2011), Teresa Colomer (2007), Graciela Montes (2020), Michèle Petit (2010), Eliana Yunes (2023), Cecília Bajour (2023) and Felipe Munita (2024) were some of the names that helped to reflect on gender inequality, reading, literature and mediation during this journey. In light of these conceptions and with the basis of what was experienced in the classroom, I realized and still notice that, in the town of Linha Taquari Mirim, where the school analyzed is located, gender divisions are still well defined, limiting women to taking care of the house, children and helping with the preparation, cultivation and harvesting of the family farm - and these functions are considered as light or second hand work. An exception is those who are not married, do not have children and/or work in a profession outside the family space. Along with this, I also see that, in addition to establishing bridges between books and readers through their literary knowledge and that of a more experienced reader, essential skills in a mediator, such as: empathy, active listening – which is different from just listening, ability to adapt – since mediation is never ready and happens in the relationship with others who also have their opinions and change. I visualize that the mediator, by making connections between the self, the other and literary reading, presents realities that would otherwise not be accessible to many young people.