For sophomores, at the “Basic Journalism” discipline, our professor Bianca Santana gave us an incredible book about how’s female prison at Brazil. Check it out a review about “Presos que Menstruam” (translating the book’s title: “Prisoners who Menstruate”):
At “Presos que Menstruam”, the author Nana Queiroz shows a hide and mad world that is forgotten by brazilian population. She went out and visited lots of prisons, where discovered some women’s lives and created a romantic and dramatic narration.
Smashing the national journalism silence for all this topics, Nana separated her book in different chapters, each one with the personal female prisoners histories. There, we can find how some women have committed several serious crimes; but how some of them are now there just because they were trying to give hers kids some food. Nana says that most common crimes committed aren’t so bold, but involving drugs and traffic.
Punished by life, a lot of them had precarious lives before the jail. Cases of abusive relationships were incredible common, and many of them involve precocious pregnancies. Actually, this is something very reported on Nana’s work: the pregnancy. Several children are born inside jails, and stay there for some months with their mothers. The unsafe ambient balance with the maternal cares, and when they need to say “goodbye”, it’s never easy.
On the other hand, a lot of children are today growing up without a unique visit to see theirs mother’s faces. It’s a hard topic and melancholic thing. The visits in prisons are very controlled and a few prisoners can see both family and friends in the same month. Only in the few released outputs, the girls can really stay with who they love; but it’s a matter of days. Soon it all comes back to the dingy atmosphere.
In other chapters of “Presos que Menstruam”, where the sexuality is the theme, Nana listen and write about de difficult of dealing with the transsexuals, who are bought to the same prison, and the homosexuality, every day more common inside the railings. The shortage of care isn’t well received by the warders.
Between one chapter and another, we can notice the absence of good conditions. Hygienic kits are missing, some collectives’ bathrooms are disgusting, women with diseases are isolated in rooms and the food isn’t something you can call like that. Even so, some of them develop a community sense and create a serious relationship with the prisoners.
In some chapters, we are brought to Glicéria, a brazilian indian who fight for her people’s lands, or Safira, adored by all men. Ieda, the strong one who lost her child guard, Michelle, who tried who tried to free her husband from prison and end up there, or Julia, who developed a drug’s dependency. Even Heidi, who tried to save her life or Erica, the pedagogue who takes cares of the prison’s library. Besides each story, with the seem of naïve Nana, we can fall into a world totally unseen that needs protection, love, pity, but mostly, visibility.