The role of school lunch servents at Itabuna-BA: feeding and racial implications
PNAE; School Feeding; School Lunch Servers; Escrevivências.
The present research discuss the work of the “merendeiras” (school lunch servers) in the municipal educational bureau of Itabuna-BA, in dialogue with the Brazilian National School Feeding Program (PNAE) and its limits for a broader and more effective participation in the scope of education in school’s environment, as well as the racial implications arising from the historical context of social formation in Brazil. One of the goals of the research is to promote a critical look at school feeding, enabling other perspectives on the work of school lunch ladies. From a critical perspective of race, class and gender, which cross the life and daily life of these professionals, a “Caderno de Escrevivências” (Writing Notebook) was built on the work of the lunch ladies as an educational product, where I expose experiences lived during the period in which I worked as a lunch server (2016-2020). We also present intervention proposals for their professional training. For the product, the Escrevivência method was used, developed by the writer and intellectual from Minas Gerais Conceição Evaristo, which consists of a type of narrative constructed and carried out by peripheral Black women who talk about themselves, while embracing the reality of many others, with the aim of removing a silenced reality from invisibility, cracking the narrative of the unique History created by the racist colonization process.