50 shades of gray and abusive relationship: an approach to jail

Abstract

This article refers to the work of library professionals focusing on the development of critical reading with women in prison. In research of immersive nature, it was possible to develop sociocultural mediations, using literate objects of information, with the internal ones of PREFEM/SE, inside the library of this prison unit. Then comes the Book Club action, carried out concurrently with the process of organizing the library collection of this female prison. In this process, and in a descriptive methodological approach, the practice of dialogue with the prisoners was acquired, thus being possible to understand aspects of real life that they approached the stories found in books. Thus, from the relationship between fantasy and reality, we identified the bestseller “50 shades of gray”, by author E. L. James, as one of the titles most consumed by them. This work, judged by the prisoners to be a novel with traces of eroticism, was the necessary hook to address recurring themes in the lives of these women, such as: domestic violence and abusive relationship. In a Book Club, this bestseller was reinterpreted, and situations previously naturalized by them, such as excessive jealousy, were differently qualified from critical reading as toxic attitudes.