Mães em Conceição Evaristo: maternidade(s) através do olhar de filhos-personagens nos contos “Olhos D’água” e “Di Lixão”.

Abstract

In the contemporary literary scene, we contemplate the writing of themes that span the history of humanity, among which is motherhood, a condition experienced by women in all cultures of the world. By perceiving these productions that place being a mother at the center of literary texts, this work aims to investigate the maternal figure in short narratives from the work Olhos d’Água by Conceição Evaristo. In order to expand our intentions, we aim to analyze the maternal relationships expressed in the short stories “Olhos d’água” and “Di lixão”; and to understand maternal practice from the perspective of the children-characters in these short stories. To this end, according to Pinheiro (2011), we carried out an activity of an interpretative nature and a thematic study and, in agreement with Gil (2002), we developed a descriptive and explanatory research, with a qualitative approach according to the guidelines of Prodanov (2013). Based on Badinter (1985), we discuss the myth of maternal love and maternal indifference, in the studies of Mendonça (2021) regarding the concept of motherhood and mothering, as well as in the research of hooks (2019, 2023), Gonzalez (2020) and Evaristo (2020) regarding the maternal experience of black women. As a result, we verified how much maternal universalization excludes experiences of women who did not have their motherhood portrayed in literature. And the literary texts we analyzed highlight this reality by exposing fictional characters that represent motherhoods existing in Brazilian society.