Images of the Black in children's literature in Brazil: historiographical analysis

Abstract

The article analyzes the social representations about the Black present in the literary production for children in the first three decades of the 20th century in Brazil. The definition of such period takes into account the emergence, from the 1920s, of the discussion around the issue of the Brazilian identity in the national literary and artistic production. Of special relevance is the construction of aesthetic and scientific references aimed at understanding the meanings of the racial composition of the population, a theme that reverberates in the works addressed to the children. If in the works produced up to the 1920s black characters were absent or referred to the then recent slavery past, a shift can now be observed. Black characters become frequent, described in such a manner as to characterize a supposed, hierarchically defined, racial integration. Through the description of the physical and cognitive features of the black characters, of their relation to white characters, and their insertion in the social sphere, a vision of the race issue addressed to children is composed. Blacks appear as stereotyped characters, described from markedly ethnocentric cultural perspectives that, even when trying to build an image of integration, do it from the whitening of the characters. Actually, more than whitening the characters, children's literature of the period addresses and shapes a model reader identified with the white characters and cultural references signaling, therefore, to the whitening of the reader.