I experienced, I lived, I was there: feelings of incarceration in Meu corpo, minha prisão

Abstract

This article focus on the book Meu corpo, minha prisão: Autobiografia de um transexual (1985) by Lorys Ádreon, recognizing it as a piece of a prison writing. Although the author had not experienced physical incarceration in a prison institution, from an early age she recognizes herself as a prisoner of a compulsory identity that is reinforced by the censorship and persecution mechanisms of the Brazilian State and its power devices, in the context of the civil-military dictatorship. Circumstances that prevented her from living freely as she recognizes herself as a woman. Writing – testimony that is carried out, as demonstrated, strategically by the intertextual aesthetics of the Alencarian 19th century novel. Especially in respect of the affective relationship with the cisheterosexual indigenous Oitameno, a proof of her femininity, because she is an object of romantic and idyllic love, as well as a claim to another possible nation for Brazil, which is proven in the context of its unfeasible publication.