Identidades e religiosidade na literatura afrodescendente : um defeito de cor, de Ana Maria Gonçalves e The bondwoman's narrative, de Hannah Crafts

Abstract

This dissertation has as corpus the novel Um defeito de cor (2006), written by Ana Maria Gonçalves and the autobiographic narrative The bondwoman’s narrative (2002), written by Hannah Crafts. Both of them were set in nineteenth century in slavery epoch in Brazil and the United States, respectively. The books present the passage of enslaved women and their diverse religious experiences occurred in the in-betweens. These experiences refer to Judeo-Christian matrix religious tradition as well as African matrix ancestral traditions. Because of this, it was justified the choice of the thematic as focus of this study. It was delineated as main purpose to analyze, in a comparative way, how occur the construction process of the identities in relation to the religiosity of main characters of the books. As specific objectives it was defined to identify the religious and cosmogonic experiences in studied characters; to examine how Kehinde/Luísa Mahin and Hannah Crafts behaved through the imposed situations by the slavery condition; to develop reflections in comparative character about the mentioned topic. The research methology was the bibligraphic survey. The knowledge about Black identities was based on the theory of Kabengele Munanga (2015), Roland Walter (2013) and Frantz Fanon (2008), among others. Stefani Capone (2011), Reginaldo Prandi (2001), William Edward Burghardt “W. E. B.” Du Bois (1999) and Pierre Verger (1981) were the theorists who based the religious and cosmogonic issue of the research. The diaspora was studied under the perspective of Dionne Brand (2005), Stuart Hall (2003) and Paul Gilroy (2001). The in-betweens were analyzed beneath the thoughts of Édouard Glissant (2011, 2005) and Homi K. Bhabha (2001). As result of the analyses it was verified that, both of the main characters, after the liberty conquering, chose by hegemonic religious practices, however in a disguised way, because they did not abandon the practices linked to African tradition, which characterize the hybridization of their identities.