Blacks and Whites in Brazilian literature

The hierarchies of race are numerous, deep and widespread in Brazilian literature. They are even omnipresent at certain periods or in certain literary movements. Research into ‘the Black as an object of literature’ brings to light the low number of black characters and whose involvement tends to be secondary, together with a tendency for them to be represented as socially subaltern or inferior:

In modern Brazilian literature, Reference DalcastagnèDalcastagnè (2008) has analysed the total number of first editions of novels (258 works) published between 1990 and 2004 by three highly reputed publishing houses, considered by a poll of literary people as being the most important ones for the publication of Brazilian fiction. This study found that 80% of the characters of these novels were White against 14% who were Black.^{Footnote 4} Among the main characters, the concentration of White characters rises to 85% while the Blacks fall back to 12%. Where there were identified narrators, these were 87% White and only 7% Black. Whites represented 92% of the economic elite and 88% of the middle classes, whereas where poor and indigent groups were depicted, the White percentage fell back to 52%. The matching of these findings against gender also yielded significant results: ‘It is possible to observe the broad predominance of White males in the roles of chief protagonist and of narrator, whereas Black females scarcely appear at all’ (Reference DalcastagnèDalcastagnè, 2008: 91). Black characters are significantly under-represented in the depiction of family or love relationships. Among the characters who are adolescent males, 58.3% of the Blacks are represented as being ‘criminals’ or ‘smugglers’ as against 11.5% of the Whites. For the latter, the role of ‘student’ is the most common, at 44.2%. This analysis shows that the White characters represent the social norm, and a variety of indicators signal that their literary treatment is more complex than that of the Black characters.

The literary representation of the Black woman usually remains anchored in the image of her slave past ‘as a body for procreation and/or a body as a pleasure-object for the male master’ (Reference Evaristo, Moreira, de Barros and SchneiderEvaristo, 2005: 201). In Brazilian literature, Black women are infertile, and thus dangerous,

According to Reference Evaristo, Moreira, de Barros and SchneiderConceição Evaristo (2005), the analysis of Black characters in this literature reveals how certain aspects are obliterated altogether by occluding the existence of an African matrix within Brazilian society along with the role of the Black woman in the development of the national culture. This erasure of family relationships and especially of the role of the mother in various discursive contexts stands in sharp contrast to the roles assumed by Black women in Brazilian society. Besides various professional functions in Brazilian cities, particularly from the post-abolitionist period of the late nineteenth century onwards, these women have exercised, or continue to exercise a central role in binding together the nucleus of families in that they are mainly those responsible for group subsistence, for mediating the emotional stresses within family relationships, and for carrying and passing on cultural values and inheritance. As an example I could invite you to observe the women of my own family to see how distant they are from the commonplaces of literary discourse.^{Footnote 5} Brazilian anthropology identifies a particular family model labelled as being matrifocal. Very commonly in the lower classes, the man is symbolic of power, whereas the woman retains the image of the one around whom the inner circle of the family is structured and coheres. Besides this, there are countless examples of Black women who have added to their role as the pillar of the family organization that of activists and leaders of resistance movements, particularly in various forms of resistance to slavery – active participation in revolts, overall command of quilombos or self-help groups – as well as being involved in or leading traditional communities and religious organizations, stimulating cultural movements and setting up numerous Black women's organizations after the end of the military dictatorship in the 1980s. The conclusion to be drawn from this discrepancy is obvious: public literature in Brazil projects social spaces on a racialized model, in which White and Black characters are led to act in specified manners, a representation which goes far beyond the simple reproduction of the racial inequalities actually present within the society. On the symbolic level these are active creations of other realities, fictive constructions which, in this specific case, have nothing to do with the ‘materiality’ of social relations. The argument is that such ideological constructs are acting (in the sense formulated by Reference ThompsonThompson, 1990) as vectors for attributing meanings determined so as to serve the unequal distribution of power. In the case of the Black woman, the creation of a discourse discounting her role acts socially to restrain her access to material and symbolic goods, so creating an atmosphere of discredit and distrust towards her social group. In other words, such forms of discourse (in this case, literature), are not restricted to simply describing existing racial inequalities, they are generating them as well.

Where this norm is breached usually arises in writers whose output is engaged in the search for an Afro identity in which the characteristics that mark inferiority have disappeared. The first novel written by a woman in Brazil, Ursula, published in 1859 by the Black writer Maria Firmina dos Reis, denounced the horrors of slavery by projecting the narrative from the point of view of an old woman captive, at a time where there were many who denied Blacks the very condition of a human being. In the same year, the ‘frizzy-haired Orpheus’ Luiz Gama published his Trovas Burlescas [Burlesque Songs], using irony not only to express his attack on slavery, but also as a tool of political struggle for liberty. Reference ProençaDomicio Proença Filho (1997) and Reference Nascimento, Silva and FernandesGizêlda Melo do Nascimento (2006b) both put forward a similar distinction between the ‘Black condition seen at a distance as object’ and the ‘Black as subject, in a stance of engagement’ (Reference ProençaProença Filho, 1997: 159). David Brookshaw's pioneering study (Reference Brookshaw1986) divides into two parts: the first looks at the White writer and analyses stereotypes; the second, which focuses on the Black writer, examines the issue of conscientization. The racial identities of authors have sometimes been taken as a condition (necessary but not sufficient) for characterizing a Brazilian Black literature focused on the condition of Blacks in Brazilian society (Reference IanniIanni, 1988: 209). For Reference BerndBernd (1988: 26), ‘the watershed factor is represented by the appearance of a first-person narrator who shows a gradual coming to awareness of the fact of being a Black in a society dominated by Whites.’ Proença Filho proposes a dual acceptation of Black literature, considering it as the literature produced by Blacks or their descendants and being characterized by sense of cultural singularity; in so doing he opens the possibility for Black literature to be ‘produced by anyone, provided that it is centred on the domains of experience particular to Blacks or to the descendants of Blacks’ (Proença Filho, 2004: 185, my emphasis). Reference DuarteEduardo de Assis Duarte (2008) declares on the one hand that ‘Afro-Brazilian literature’ forms an integral part of Brazilian literature as a whole in that it uses the same language and the same forms of expression, but on the other, that it lies outside of that literature in that it does not share in the mission ‘to engender a national spirit’ in the sense that it is engaged in a project that it transcends that mission. Its particular goal is ‘to raise up within the literate culture generated by writers of African heritage a form of writing that is not only the expression of this heritage in terms of its culture and art, but which also sheds light upon the ethnocentrism that has excluded those of African descent from the world of letters and from civilization itself’ (Reference DuarteDuarte, 2008: 22). Duarte identifies the following features as the configuring criteria for this literature: the thematic focus, with the principal theme being the life of a Black person; the author, either him- or herself a member of the Afro-Brazilian community, or who projects a subjective narrator who affirms and willingly adopts a Black identity; the point of view, a vision of the world which identifies with the history and culture of Africa, whether it is drawn from Africa itself of from the African diaspora; the linguistic expression, which should be based on a specific discursive style, making use of language rhythms, meanings and vocabularies in which Africanisms are to the fore; the intention to shape an Afro-Brazilian reading public. Duarte pleads also for the adoption of ‘pluralist criteria’ firmly anchored in the ‘dialectic orientation’ and open to diversity, where each criterion should be embraced interactively and not in isolation.

These classifications retain a certain elasticity and embrace various polemics. Thus, in the case of Machado de Assis, Reference Nascimento, Silva and FernandesNascimento (2006b) points to the tiny presence of Black characters in his works and the complete erasure of the otherness of the Black, Prudêncio, in Brás Cubas, which precisely reproduces the atrocities of which he was the victim. In another article, Nascimento analyses the absence of Black characters in Machado's works, declaring that such an absence is highly revelatory: the author omits the Black as a fictional person in order better to denounce the social model in question which is a dead-end one for a society in which the patriarchal and master–slave order is so deeply embedded (Reference NascimentoNascimento, 2002: 61). Reference ProençaProença Filho (1997) asserts that in Machado's fictional works an assumed Afro perspective is not found. But Reference DuarteDuarte (2007) for his part brings together an anthology of texts in which Machado de Assis does project himself as Afro-descendant and where the author develops a series of critical arguments with regard to the established order and the system based on master–slave attitudes:

According to Reference BrookshawBrookshaw (1986) it is Black poetry that has been the real literary movement giving singular focus to the Black in Brazil, despite the few works in prose cited by this author. This can be observed in the utterance of the Black woman narrator, in a poem by Conceiçao Evaristo:

Reference BezerraBezerra (2007: 128–132) analyses this poem as the manifestation of dissonance, the way of elaborating a genealogy which breaks with the colonial logic of racism and sexism. Such breaches and challenges to the silence around these matters have intensified in recent times. We might take as an example the publication since 1978 of an anthology of texts of Black authors which now appears under the title of Quilomboje. Reference DalcastagnèDalcastagnè (2008) examines cases of exception to the rule of not including Black characters in the plot, and asserts that ‘Black characters may perhaps help White readers better understand what it is to be Black in Brazil’ (Reference Dalcastagnè2008: 108). Regarding the novel Um defeito de cor [A Colour Defect] by Ana Maria Gonçalves, Dalcastagnè shows how the book ‘seeks to get away from the model of the “poor slave of the senzala” [a slave encampment in Brazil: translator's note], presenting rather the life possibilities of an educated slave who takes every opportunity to learn and to win freedom, particularly in the case of a woman’ (ibid.: 101). Ponciá Vicêncio, by Conceição Evaristo, makes suffering the link between the character and the reader, bringing out in this way the suffering of our Black people. In the short stories of the collection Ninguém é inocente em São Paulo [No One is Innocent in Sao Paulo], Reginaldo Ferreira da Silva Ferréz describes the reality of a favela in a manner which gets away from the stereotype of the crime novel: ‘instead of gunshots and angry voices what you hear is the sound of the writer typing out his text in his shack, or else youths talking about some job prospect’ (ibid. 105). Different aspects of the literary works of Henrique Cunha Junior, one of the contributors to Quilomboje under its earlier title Cadernos Negros [Black Notebooks], are pointed to as examples of an intellectual who has adopted the voice of his collectivity (Reference OliveiraOliveira 2008).

Some literary analysts affirm the position whereby any breach with the prevailing canons needs to be accompanied by an appropriation of broader understandings of the notions of culture and literature. One such analytical view observes that oral narratives are overlaid with features common to literature and those who lay down such narratives have been called ‘poets on the boundary between factual relation and poetic creation’ (Reference NascimentoNascimento, 2006a: 8). Rap has become validated as non-mainstream voice of rebellion. Reference SallesSalles (2004) and Reference InácioInácio (2008) bring out elements of identity literature in the rap of the Sao Paulo band Racionais MC's. Reference Adolfo and AndreiAdolfo (2007) analyses the oral culture of the Candomblé ‘houses’ as a specifically Afro-Brazilian form of literary expression.

Reference PereiraPereira (2008) states that such productions have stimulated seminars, provoked dialogue with foreign researchers and become subjects for degree memoirs and theses. Certain lines of research and a number of authors in particular ‘are contributing to the development of educational texts’ (Reference Pereira2008: 38), broadening the range of aesthetic issues that may be included in university literature programmes and are ‘encouraging the modification of literary canons in Brazil’ (ibid.).

However, this outlook seems to us excessively optimistic. We prefer to consider such changes as evidence of a gradual re-orientation in response to the challenges thrown up. As we have already stated elsewhere:

The Brazilian literature published by the most prestigious publishing houses frequently includes sets of works which perpetuate the silence about race relations in the country.

Blacks and Whites in Brazilian children's literature

We begin with this long quotation from the Nigerian writer as her theme and her argument reflect the themes and arguments that we have adopted here. ‘Single stories’ lead us into error, into naïve generalizations, stereotypes and the exercise of authoritarianism. Let's pick up again the story of the thousand and one nights.

Let us first have a closer look at what Chimamanda Adichie was saying. The books that we read as children in Brazil are not the same as those English or American children read. Neither are they the same as those read by Portuguese children. Do all our characters have blue eyes? Do they play in the snow? Do they eat apples? Let us see what Brazilian research tell us about this.

Throughout her analysis of children's literature published at the beginning of the twentieth century, Maria Cristina S. Gouvêa encountered clear forms of discrimination with regard to Black characters, which led her to make an in-depth analysis of the issue, devoting one chapter of her research to this theme (Reference GouvêaGouvêa 2004, Reference Gouvêa2005). In Brazilian children's literature produced between 1900 and 1920, Black characters scarcely appeared at all, and the rare exceptions all harked back to the slave past. In the decade that followed, they became more frequent, but seemingly constructed as part of a movement to recuperate the characteristics of the national folklore, with purely stereotyped characters showing simplified traits, together with sharply ethnocentric references associated with simplicity and primitive lifestyles, with ignorance, with old-time rural settings and with animalized physical features (Reference GouvêaGouvêa, 2004: 219–262). In some stories there were Black characters who sometimes filled the role of passing on ideas about racial integration and getting on together, but these were always not attributed any particular ethno-racial identity and distinctions were reduced to the purely physical racial differences. ‘The possibility that the races could get on together came about with a whitening of the Black characters […]. In effect, the ideal of whitening, which is so marked in the sociological analysis of inter-racial relations in Brazil, is to be found in almost every text’ (Reference GouvêaGouvêa, 2005: 89).

In a study analysing a sample of children's literature published between 1955 and 1975, 72% of the characters were identified as being White, against 7% as Black, while in the accompanying illustrations 69% were White and 5% Black (Reference RosembergRosemberg, 1985). Another study has brought Rosemberg's work up to date by looking at the following period (1975–1995). This study's author observed some slight changes (Reference BazilliBazilli, 1999). A reduction in the proportion of characters with exaggeratedly non-White features could be established, and there was a slight increase in Black characters in more highly qualified professions. However, the generally privileged roles of the White characters were maintained: Black characters remained under-represented, with those there having less important roles in the story, with a lesser literary complexity, and engaged in jobs of lower status. Reference Lima and MunangaLima (1999: 102ff.) also points to the invisibility of Black characters and their stereotyped treatment. Besides these disproportions, certain works put across other forms of hierarchization between Whites and Blacks. The study of certain Black characters shows that there have been some who were given significant roles, even that of the main protagonist (Reference Lima and MunangaLima 1999; Reference SousaSouza 2005). But the superiority of the Whites and the subordination of the Blacks has been largely maintained, as is shown in a recent study bearing on a ‘collection’ of sets of 20 books distributed in 2005 by the National School Library Programme (NSLP) (Reference VenâncioVênancio, 2009). Out of a total of 7,259 characters identified in these texts, 3,077 were classified as Whites (42.4%) and 448 as Blacks or mixed-race (6.1%). The under-representation of Black characters has thus been maintained, but the tendency to show Black characters in less-developed fashion has changed (Reference RosembergRosemberg, 1985; Reference BazilliBazilli, 1999). In the case of the NSLP collection (of 2005), the inclusion of one or two books which give a strong role to Blacks and indigenous characters in each set of 20 books seems to have been accompanied by the absence of or silence concerning Blacks in the other works, and has lifted the indicator beyond the values noted in Bazilli's study that looked at first editions of children's literature published between 1975 and 1995. Hence, the inequality still remains high in comparison to earlier studies. Such an outcome can be interpreted as an indicator of the solid persistence of whiteness which retains the value of a norm, despite the efforts to demand change by groups engaged in social activism, and despite laws overseeing the inclusion of the African cultural heritage and the actions of organizations like SECAD [the Secretariat of Continuing Education, Literacy and Diversity], which intervened to require the insertion in each NSLP ‘collection’ of works giving an important place to Blacks and indigenous people. Rosemberg's conclusions still seem valid on this subject.

We are faced then with the following challenge: how to bring about changes to this situation? Well, to reply to the questions that I put when starting with Chimamanda's recollections: the characters in the stories that we read as children have been eating mangoes for more than a century, they have been talking about real life in Brazil at least since the 1930s, and if, for all those who, like me, were in primary school in the 1970s, the majority of the books of children's literature that were available were still stories of didactic moralization, it was from that decade on that began the composition of stories and characters that had a greater literary quality and were more true to life. In doing, such stories ceased being the notable exception and became the norm (Reference CoelhoCoelho, 1995). However, the inclusion of characters ‘with chocolate coloured skin’ was still very timid within this new style of story-telling, and it is only very recently that there can be observed a more marked attempt to diffuse more overtly the otherness of Afro-Brazilian culture and lifestyle. The multi-faceted children's literature of this country does not yet seem to have entirely escaped from the ‘danger of the single story’ as far as the inequalities in the treatment of racial groups in Brazil are concerned. So, are they any alternatives?

In the area of book production, Michael Apple's thoughts (Reference Apple and Apple1995) around the ‘artefacts of the programme’ appear to me quite relevant. Educational books bring about and reinforce social inequalities based on gender, race and social class; Apple states that it is interesting to ask and find out how far these inequalities are also spread throughout the various spheres of the production process, that is, in what ways do these inequalities show up in the publishing houses themselves that produce and distribute the book-object to the consuming public. There is little research being done at present along these lines and the data available about the Brazilian publishing market are fragmentary and fairly inconsistent (as in the case of the ‘Diagnostics of the Brazilian Publishing Sector’ conducted by the Brazilian Book Chamber, http://cbl.org.br/). By carrying out analysis into policies around reading and education, it might be possible to arrive at significant results with which to inform the debate on racial inequalities. But despite the current absence of such data, we can still deduce that in the various social spaces where the production, evaluation and distribution of books take place, racial inequalities remained marked: an over-representation of Blacks can be observed in the service personnel sphere (coffee-makers, cleaners, security personnel) and an under-representation of Blacks in the spheres of production, directly indexed to the hierarchies in the different spaces: publishing executives, artistic directors, chief editors, graphic designers, specialist readers, the editorial secretariat, copy-readers, proof-readers, lay-out people, photographers, printers, binders, illustrators and, indeed, authors …. What about the male-female distribution? The proportions of Whites, Blacks and Indigenous? Such questions need also to be put to those in positions of responsibility for book production policies, education policies, review commissions and unions and associations of publishers, authors and illustrators.

Children's literature production has long chosen Brazilian and nationalist themes, but these have clearly been presented with a uniform perspective on the world, and as such, Eurocentred and even Eurocentric. But at the present times there are some interesting developments taking place marking a cleavage with this outlook. Reference VenâncioVenâncio (2009) has identified in the work of the indigenous writer Daniel Munduruku a story which brings together qualities of literary artistry, of genuine reading pleasure and of a break with the predominant manner of seeing the world. In this it presents a different story, one that transcends the single vision of the world, and one certainly well beyond the stereotype of the Indian Tibicuera who was a constant presence during the years of our schooling. These days there are other voices and perspectives being addressed to young readers. Recently this same author took a leading part in promoting and publicizing the 7^th Tamoios^{Footnote 7} Indigenous Writers’ Competition sponsored by the National Foundation of Children's Books and the Brazilian Indigenous Institute for Intellectual Property, which points to new emerging voices.

In relation to authors of children's literature who project subjective narrators who openly assert a Black identity along with a Black story line and language and who are targeting a particular reading public (following the criteria set by Duarte and quoted earlier), we can also observe important changes. We mention in another publication that ‘within the area of children's literature, one does not observe the same change as in adult literature which, even if parsimoniously, is bringing attention to the production of Black writers’ (Reference da, Paulo, Rosemberg and Van Dijkda Silva and Rosemberg, 2008: 104). There perhaps has not been for this sector the ongoing agitation over several decades to promote Black writers, as during the period of publication of the Cadernos Negros, but the valorization of a concept of negritude in Brazilian children's literature has gone beyond that even of recognized and prize-winning authors such as Geni Guimarães and Joel Rufino dos Santos. In this respect there deserve to be mentioned Heloisa Pires Lima, Edmilson de Almeida Pereira and Rogério Andrade Barbosa (with apologies to others we have missed), who are part of a movement which is growing broader and more sharply focused, in part under the impulse of Law 10.39/03. Afro voices and those of the Black diaspora which are part of us are becoming more distinct, are being heard more loudly and more often, and are expressing themselves more and more as they move down the path in search of the thousand and one stories. Once more we can find some illumination in the words of Chimamanda: the hope is that the books of Afro-Brazilian authors (as well as of Africans of the diaspora and of our indigenous peoples), even if they are not yet numerous and remain difficult to find, will bring about a change in our way of thinking, and that we will be able to identify with that literature, and believe that we can exist on the symbolic level in positions that go well beyond those of subalternity; that such books will allow us to escape from a single story about what books are.

But despite these possible transformations of meaning, we are still shaped by an ambiguous racism where the overarching norm is still one of whiteness, and where the racial democracy myth still prevails. Among the voices that make up our society there remains that of the colonizer. So it is that ‘certain attempts to produce anti-racist children's literature are still clumsy and inappropriate’ (Reference da, Paulo, Rosemberg and Van Dijkda Silva and Rosemberg, 2008: 104). The contradictions emerge in various forms, for example through the use of stereotypes in the works of authors and/or illustrators with good anti-racist intentions. In the publications of recognized writers devoted to ‘the deconstruction of the negative stereotypes of Blacks’, we observe for example that the attribution of beauty and a positive connotation of colour to characters of Menina bonita do laço de fita [The Pretty Girl with the Lace Ribbon] and of O menino marrom [The Brown Boy] exist alongside an idealization of the inter-racial relationship (Reference FrançaFrança, 2008), and, in Menina bonita, with the presence of more elaborate forms of White/Black hierarchical distribution.

Two further themes should also be addressed. Firstly, the opus of Monteiro Lobato, a writer of the first half of the twentieth century who remains one of the most widely read in the country: beneath a certain revolutionary exterior, his work shows up as being conservative in the worst sense of the term insofar as issues of race (and of gender) are concerned, to the extent that his discourse bears numerous marks of racism, both implicit and explicit. The significance of this author deserves that these issues should be thoroughly discussed, but we will refrain from entering into such here, being happy simply to bring the matter to attention. The other point concerns Chimamanda Adichie's assertion that children are particularly impressionable when reading stories. What does research have to say about this?

A few concluding remarks

A certain number of challenges remain for further consideration and research. At the level of text analysis properly speaking, there are matters to clarify around the way stories, characters and illustrations generate and/or reproduce symbolic structures which form hierarchies of Whites on one side and Blacks and Indigenous on the other, or further, around the extent and manner to which these texts function in relation to emancipation and the respect for difference. In the various domains of publication and assessment of literary worth, how are those involved distributed and ranked according to race, gender, age and class? What are the possible consequences of these issues for literary expression in general, in terms of a hegemonic vision of the world or otherwise? Also we must not forget to pay particular attention to authors, in order to distinguish which features are hegemonic and which can be counter-hegemonic.

There is a lack of dialogue, even within the academic sphere itself, around the involvement of individuals of different social strata in the processes of production, evaluation, distribution and reading of books. To enable such a dialogue to be established, thinking about racism as an operative social factor on the structural and symbolic levels helps to reduce the number of possible defensive responses. In other words, it is not a matter of calling so-and-so or someone else a racist, for racism is an ingrained part of all of us and of the way we express ourselves. It is rather a matter of facing up to this issue with an open and critical mind, instead of hiding the problem as we so often do (and, usually, as a way of maintaining power).

Outside of these considerations, our zumbíleo efforts continue. In the field of the interpretation of symbolic forms, there is another point of inflection and of complexity. Various possible stray readings are always present. In certain specific contexts, forms of resistance to the colonizing discourses may well emerge. In others, texts expressing difference and diversity can generate incomprehension and give rise to racializing or racist commentaries. The results of Araújo's analyses (Reference Araújo2010) contain passages of this type, in which the variety of adornments of African women is represented as being little more than symbols of ugliness and ‘primitiveness’. The interpretive role of teachers can have a certain effect, whether through the possibility of promoting the ability to analyse racist discourses critically or through directly or indirectly conveying racist and sexist messages in the classroom by turning on their heads texts intended to promote diversity, as is demonstrated in the analyses of Reference OliveiraOliveira (1992), Reference LopesLopes (2002) and Reference AraújoAraújo (2010). The appropriate training of teachers is thus once more shown to be of great importance.

On the level of the research, production, dissemination and interpretation of symbolic forms through the discourses of adult and children's literature and in educational texts, the great challenge consists of reworking these discourses by incorporating other visions of the world. It is a matter in particular of transcending the hierarchies involving Whites and Blacks, and notably the normative perception of whiteness, the idea that the norm for humanity is to be White which, silently, insidiously and unceasingly keeps up its hegemony.

Seen from the perspective of emancipation and freedom, there is an urgent requirement for more space and greater social recognition to accommodate new discourses.

(Conceição Evaristo)

Translated from the Portuguese and French by Colin Anderson