Voices of Memory

Literary Readings as Generators of Discussions About/With/From Body Experiences in English Classes

Abstract

In this study, as language teachers and researchers prompted by the intersections of literary readings and the multiple layers of meaning they may evoke in language education, we seek to revisit the records of a formative experience developed within the Institutional Teaching Initiation Scholarship Program (known in Brazil as Pibid). Now situated in another space-time marked by new perspectives and praxiological growth, we aim to reflect on possible decolonial movements that emerged during English language classes with a 9th-grade class in a public school by drawing on a kind of autoethnographic writing. Our focus lies on the reading of literary texts in diary format, understood as powerful artifacts for creating spaces of listening, dialogue, and the resignification of knowledge based on the lived experiences of the subjects involved. Specifically, we problematize the use of excerpts from The Diary of a Young Girl (2024 [1947]), by Anne Frank, and Child of the Dark (1962 [1960]), by Carolina Maria de Jesus, as catalysts for discussions that address socio-historical and identity-related issues, while establishing connections between the authors’ contexts and the students’ realities. This experience allowed us to reexamine our praxiologies at different moments of our teaching journeys and reaffirm our ethical and political commitment to transformative education. To do so, we relied on the university-school relationship as a fertile ground for ongoing teacher education, situated knowledge production, and the strengthening of pedagogical practices.