Precariousness and uprooting in Myra by Maria Velho da Costa

Abstract

This article discusses Maria Velho da Costa´s book called Myra, from the precarious condition of a young foreign Russian woman, victim of a well structured system of human trafficking for sexual exploitation in Portugal. Not allowed to be, all that is left for the character is to hide herself in countless masks (alongside a dog) according to the occasion once allowing herself to be assimilated into the new culture would be equivalent to a kind of annihilation. Through an exercise of a growing soul, I intend, along with Kristeva, Donatella di Cesari and Llansol to draw dialogues and understandings regarding the feminine and the strategies the character employs to forge her own identity.