O lugar de fala da mulher negra em Olhos d’Água, de Conceição Evaristo

Abstract

This artiche develops an analysis from the book Olhos d'Água by Conceição Evaristo. The reading of the author's short stories is carried out considering the representations of images related to Afro-Brazilian women. The reading of the author's content is carried out considering the representations of images related to Afro-Brazilian women. The research starts from the perspective that Evaristo undertakes the decolonization of black women by placing her in a discursive space towards the liberation of the colonialist heritage. A posture in which the rescue of the social being prevails is a present trace in the writer's production. It is also noticed that reality and fiction are intertwined or put together, originating what the author called "escrevivência". In this process, the author highlights figures of the society in the center of the narratives who are found in the ghetto (the ignored space) and are linked to a social hierarchical chain which brings the white man at the top and, subsequently, the white woman. After them comes the black man and, finally, the black woman who, by differentiating herself from both the white woman and the white man, becomes “the other of the other”, a doubly subalternized subcategory. In the study, the conquest of the voice and the recognition of this standpoint are highlighted since the subordinate figure finds self-realization, what does not occur in a colonialist society. The theoretical support that directs the analyzes lies mainly in the works of authors who debate the standpoint theory, black feminism, female-authored literature, the intersection of gender, ethnicity and social class, as Djamila Ribeiro (2019), Luiza Lobo (1993), Grada Kilomba (2019), Gayatri C. Spivak (2010), among others.