Literature as a way of reading the world

gender and inequalities in the project “Voices that verse resistance” — literature and poetry at schools

Abstract

This experience report presents a popular education initiative developed through the project “Women who verse resistance: literature and poetry at schools”. The project emerged from the literary club “Women who run with books” and targeted 8th-grade students at a municipal school in Santa Rita, Paraíba, Brazil. Its objective was to promote critical literary education through works written by women, addressing gender, racial, and class inequalities from the perspective of marginalized subjects. Literature was approached as a tool for reading the world, connecting language and social reality. The methodology consisted of thematic workshops featuring authors such as Conceição Evaristo and Carolina Maria de Jesus, whose works stimulated discussions on social justice and intersectional experiences. Students actively engaged in creative writing activities, culminating in the production of individual and collective poems. Brazilian National Poetry Day was celebrated with the exhibition “Voices that verse resistance”, in which students displayed their voices on the school’s walls using the urban wheatpasting poster technique. The results demonstrated strengthened critical consciousness, encouragement of literary reading and its decolonization, reaffirming literature as a powerful space of resistance and social transformation.