Ancestrality, memory, and resistance in Quilombola women’s voices: a critical analysis through Quarto de Despejo

This article examines ancestrality as an ethical and epistemological foundation for the resistance practices of Quilombola women in southern Brazil. Based on a qualitative study using focus groups and facilitated listening sessions, it analyzes narratives that weave together material precarity, structural racism, gender-based violence, and institutional erasure, counterbalanced by strategies of care, collective memory, and intergenerational bonds. The analysis engages Quarto de Despejo (Child of the Dark) by Carolina Maria de Jesus as a critical methodological device, creating a space of dialogue between marginal literature and contemporary Quilombola testimonies. Findings demonstrate that ancestrality, far from a mere symbolic evocation, operates as an active matrix of belonging, healing, as well as subjective and territorial reconstruction. By recognizing these voices as knowledge producers, the study contributes to debates on epistemic justice, reparative policies, and forms of governance grounded in the lived knowledge of racialized communities.