Central at the Margin examines the work of five Brazilian women writers: Julia Lopes de Almeida, and women's power within and outside the family; Rachel de Queiroz and the relation between backcountry "matriarchs" and city wives and workers; Lygia Fagundes Telles and the crumbling world of the coffee aristocrat; Clarice Lispector and what constitutes a Brazilian, a woman, a writer; Carolina Maria de Jesus and the definition of marginality at the margin. They lived and worked between the late nineteenth century and the 1970s. Their names are widely recognized in Brazil: they are central to the literary scene there; collectively they have received every literary honor and prize available. The book examines the meaning of such centrality for women whose work is nevertheless not included in the history of the development of Brazilian literature - their centrality is problematic in their place of origin - and by implication, it questions concepts of centrality and marginality within Brazilian literature and in the relation between Brazilian and world literatures.