Processo identitário, colorismo e autoaceitação no romance Deus ajude essa criança, de Toni Morriso

Abstract

The novel God Help the Child (2018), by Toni Morrison, displays contemporary themes concerning gender, race, and culture within African American literature. Therefore, this research aims to analyze the issues of identity, colorism and self-acceptance of the Black female characters Bride and Mel, which led to sequelae that interfered and still interfere in the construction of the identity and acceptance of Black women. In such manner, this work intends to look at the approach given to skin tones in the novel and how this characteristic affects the relationships between the characters and their ways of life. The mechanisms that the author used in the novel to correlate colorism, a topic hardly considered, with the phenomena that contribute to the formation of a black person's identity and their selfaffirmation as a black woman are presented. In this project, priority was given to analyzing the novel from the perspective of Black feminism, in which were used the theoretical foundations of Hooks (2019), Collins (2019), Kilomba (2019), Akotirene, (2019), as they understand how the Black women’s identity processes work. To discuss those processes, the theories of Hall (2020), Gomes (2020), Woodward (2020) were considered. In addition, the theories of Morrison (2020), Almeida (2021) and Devulsky (2021), which deal with racism and colorism, are also relied on. Literary discourse can highlight the social transformations that occur in the world while also influencing new changes. God Help the Child deals with the non-acceptance of Black women by society and how this affects their self-affirmation, generating tragic consequences from childhood lasting throughout life. It was possible to observe in the novel, how identity shapes the process of acceptance of Black women and how social pressures, and dominant group’s ideals interfere in the way characters from a minority group perceive themselves. Through the writing of Black women, such as Toni Morrison, a form of emancipation and militancy is manifested by humanizing their characters and allowing them to raise their voices as an act of resistance, a political gesture that challenges domination policies.