Between (In)Sanity and Racial Denunciation: Narrative Adventures and Misadventures in Madhouse Diary and The Cemetery of the Living (1956), by Lima Barreto

ABSTRACT The present study, resulting from a doctoral research, focuses on the autobiographical work of Lima Barreto, Madhouse Diary and The Cemetery of the Living (1956), analyzing the narratives therein that address the intersection between mental health and racism in Brazil in the early 20th century. Lima Barreto, one of the first black writers to describe the reality of a Brazilian asylum as a patient, offers a critical analysis of life in Brazil at that time; and the author highlights the presence of an oppressive system manifested in the supposed “care” directed at those deemed “alienated” or “crazy” - a system that is particularly more humiliating when directed at black and non-white people, in general. In doing so, this study does not propose definitive conclusions about Barreto’s thought, but highlights the spaces occupied by psychological and psychiatric thinking in Brazilian society of that period, as depicted in the narratives of Lima Barreto’s selected work.