Banca de DEFESA: ADRIANA MINERVINA DA SILVA

RETRACTIONS OF MEMORY: THE EFFECTS OF COLONIALISM ON THE SUBJECTIVITY OF BLACK WOMEN IN "UM DEFEIRO DE COR", BY ANA MARIA GONÇALVES

Colonialism, Counter-narrative, Self-presentation of black women.

This study aims to analyze the narrative of "A Color Defect,” by the writer Ana Maria Gonçalves. Set in the early 19th century, the narrative covers the life story of Kehinde, a black woman born in Savalu, Africa, who is captured and brought to Brazil to be enslaved as a child. Throughout her life, Kehinde faces many challenges due to the need to live in a slave-owning society, under the effects of coloniality of power (QUIJANO, 2005), gender (LUGONES, 2014), and many other forms of violence. During her education, Kehinde has the opportunity to learn her first letters and has contact with literature. This meeting turns out to be transformative for her life because, through many literary readings, she acquires a level of intellectuality that makes her face life differently and gives her the strength to overcome the sufferings she went through. We propose a reading of "A Color Defect" from the perspective of a female education novel (PINTO, 1990), as the narrative presents us with the entire formative process of the character Kehinde in various dimensions: intellectual, personal, cultural, and financial (MIRANDA, 2019). In this sense, the influence of African and Brazilian culture is shown to be in constant interaction, contributing to its constant cultural conflict. Such conflicts influence the way Kehinde exercises her motherhood, also permeated by her experiences and pain as a black mother in the diaspora, acting in the constant opposition between Africa and Brazil (SILVA, 2019). We recognize in Kehinde the voice of a historical counter-narrative (CALADO, 2018), for her role in narrating her experiences (GINZBURG, 2012), for her intellectuality acquired through literature (CANDIDO, 1972), and her resistance movements, which show new possibilities of self-presentation of black women in Brazilian literature (EVARISTO, 2005). With that, Kehinde configures herself as a black mother who has a lot to teach, narrate, tell, and literarily nourish all her reading children.