| Sumario: | This article focuses on Natércia Pontes's first novel, Os tais caquinhos (2021), which is narrated by Abigail, a teenager struggling with the departure of her mother who moved out of their family apartment with her two youngest daughters. Abigail's mother's departure precipitated the neglect of their apartment, and Abigail delights in recording the grotesqueness of her family home, which is infested with bugs and full of moldy objects that her father refuses to throw away. Engaging Julia Kristeva's conception of abjection, as well as theories about narration and feminism, I argue that Pontes employs first-person narration and an aesthetic of abjection to foreground imagination, emotions, senses, desires, and relationships to place and to one's body. By emphasizing a girl's playful and willful narrative voice, the novel underscores the value of girls' creative agency, unfiltered by external shaming. Pontes—by choosing this voice for her narrator—foregrounds an imaginative, unconventional girl who insists on approaching her experience beyond stereotypical labels or expectations. While the novel's content uncovers Abigail's isolation and catalyzes readers' empathy, what stands out most in Abigail's self-affirmation is her powerful stylized writing, characterized by humor, metaphors, irony, wordplay, and refusal to be startled by what makes others cringe.
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