“The streets took me in, but I will not lose my son to any stranger”: Carolina and the meanings of maternity in the street situation context

Abstract

Slavery is a critical event in the establishment of Brazilian society, and in particular, how Black women were (and still are) integrated into it. Black women were the mainstay of Brazilian social formation. So, today, they start from the place of someone who carries four centuries of enslavement. This ethnography seeks to recognize in the voice of Carolina, a Black woman living on the streets in Little Africa in Rio de Janeiro, the meanings of being a woman, motherhood in the context of homelessness, and its relationships with public policies. Carolina’s story helps us understand the space in which being a woman acquires meanings from the reproductive capacity and what it forges in negotiations toward mothering possibilities. She experiences the street as a space of freedom but also of insecurity and precariousness. “Handing over” the child to the legal adoption system has different meanings than those constructed by State agents. Carolina believes that “handing over” a child means breaking with any possibility of “becoming a woman” and “mother”. There is an urgent need to have an anti-racist State agenda that guides the dramatic reality of women living on the streets and their descendants under the reparatory rationale.

Keywords:
Racism; Gender; Human Rights; Parenting; Homeless Persons