DEAR RUTH: CORRESPONDENCE FROM MOEMA TOSCANO TO RUTH MENEZES KARAM

Abstract

In this article we explore the private correspondence sent by Moema Toscano to Ruth Menezes Karam, more specifically three letters and 14 postcards. Ruth and Moema met and became friends – afterwards correspondents – in 1948. Together they attended the enhancement course of the National School for Physical Education in Rio de Janeiro and shared the “adventure” of studying in the carioca capital, a still uncommon feat by this period for two single women who were also elementary teachers from the countryside of the Rio Grande do Sul state. Later, Moema, a feminist, militant, sociologist and college professor – was compulsorily retired from the university in April 1969 based on the AI-5 and reintegrated to UFRJ in 1979 – settling in Rio de Janeiro and from there – and from several places in the world, wrote to her friend Ruth, with whom she kept a six-decade friendship. Ruth Menezes Karam, the recipient, lived in Bagé, in the border of Rio Grande do Sul and was a pedagogue, professor and an educational advisor. Some themes are recurring in their correspondence: Moema’s travels, their friendship, family and, posteriorly, health and aging. We work with the idea of Dauphin and Poublan (2002) that ordinary correspondence unravels the private life, which hides behind the public scene.