Caboquinhas que leem: o hábito da leitura como narrativa emancipatória para mulheres na Região Metropolitana de Manaus

Abstract

Based on the social interactions developed within the scope of the actions of the Caboquinhas que Leem book club, an exclusive reading club for women based in the city of Manaus and formed organically through social media, referral by acquaintances or contact at literary meetings, this research focuses on analyzing the impacts of the habit of reading on the lives of Amazonian women based on their sociability in the Caboquinhas que Leem book club. To this end, we opted for a methodology that encompasses the content of the investigation with a view to approaching reading habits in the social dynamics of a group of women, who in turn develop sociability through a book club. Therefore, this research is characterized as exploratory, using the phenomenological method and qualitative approach to obtain its results. In turn, data collection took place in three stages: the first stage refers to the characterization of the population studied through the online application of a questionnaire, with the object of the research being made up of 55 active participants, of which 47 responded to the questionnaire and 40 participated in the club within the proposed period of 2019 to 2020; the second stage, as far as it is concerned, was intended to select a sample of the population that had participated in specific readings to participate in the last stage of data collection; and, in the last stage, collective interviews were held virtually with groups of 3 participants, totaling 9 research subjects, with the aim of reconstituting three readings and meetings of the Caboquinhas que Leem book club. Then, the data was processed, categorized and analyzed using the discourse analysis technique. Finally, the result obtained corresponds to the initial hypothesis — and even goes beyond it — by proposing that the sociability provided by the Caboquinhas que Leem book club guarantees participating women a specific social identity, constituting a support network as a feminist collective, and allowing cultural emancipation through the habit of reading.