Escrevivência e ancestralidade nos contos de mãe beata de Yemonjá, Conceição Evaristo e Cristiane Sobral

Abstract

This paper aims to analyze short stories of three Afro-Brazilian women authors, whose selected titles are as follows: "A pena do ekodidé", by Mãe Beata de Yemonjá (2002), "Fios de ouro", by Conceição Evaristo (2017), "Das águas", by Cristiane Sobral (2017). In this order, the protagonists "mocinha", since Beata does not present her with a proper name, Halima and Omi are crossed by the ulcer of inferiorization, whether arising from the dominant historical-social influence or from patterns conserved in the way of living in community. In all three titles, different contexts of oppression referring to gender are addressed, sharply mitigating the issue of appearance. In the course of the narratives, the stigma is overcome by the strength of the orixá Oxum. Such gesture concatenates the writing's espistemological point of view, "seated" (SALES, 2020) in the strength of the orixá's axé. The writing procedure is expressed in the writings of Beata (2002), Evaristo (2017) and Sobral (2017) through the precepts of the African-based religion put in the foreground, the dignification of the Afro-descendant beauty through the actions of an originally African deity, the body as a place of interpretation beyond the text and the word in the arrangement of quasi-speech. Taking these premises as a basis, we analyze the protagonism of the "young lady", Halima and Omi, as well as that of Oxum for their empowerment, from two prisms: First, the characters going through the identity curtailment; Second, Oxum enabling the identity reaffirmation. In the first axis, we identify which means of oppression contributed to the control of the characters' performance. In the second axis, we analyze Oxum ancestrally manifested for the edification of the protagonists in front of such sources of oppression. This is a bibliographical research, therefore, in order to theoretically support the exposed ideas, we rely on texts by the following authors: Evaristo (2020), Silva (2020), Sales (2020), Machado (2020), Duarte (2010), Ianni (1988), Du Bois (2019), Souza (2006,2015,2017), Carneiro (2019), Gonzalez (2020), Collins (2019), hooks (2019), Munanga (2019), Cuti (2010), Dalcastagnè (2012), Kilomba (2012), Gomes (2007), Rosa (2003), Sodré (2002), Risério (1996), Hall (2003), Spivak (2010), Beata (2002), Evaristo (2017), and Sobral (2017). In analyzing the short stories, we conclude that the authors begin the narratives by inciting how women are received in mostly whitened places and how they are whitened and/or martyred being in those places. However, they close the tales with the ancestral upliftment that starts in the spoken word, going through an entire narrative and protagonist construction, until arriving at the final triumph: black heroine characters, who start to have different ways of possibilities opened by Oxum, to change the course of their own history.