Between visible and the invisible: the coloniality and the narrative space in "O avesso da pele", by Jeferson Tenório

Abstract

The current Brazilian literary works have been responsible for exalt the voices that were historically and socially subdued for years. By the adoption of a bigger diversity of colors and genders, the contemporary romances gain prominence at the editorial market. One of the exponents authorships is Jeferson Tenório, writer of O avesso da pele (2020), a romance that reports the structural violence against the black community in Brazil. The book was briefly censoured in schools in the south and the mid-west of the country for unjustified reasons. The narrative retrieves Henrique’s story, a literature teacher murdered during an inappropriate police approach. Passing by a mourning period, his son Peter shares with the reader the details of his life, with intimate memories of Henrique’s childhood, adolescence and adult life. Through the description of his dad’s feelings, it’s shown the discomfort of the character: a black man that lives in a peripheral region in Porto Alegre and his feeling of rejection due the frequent repressions made by the authorities just for walking the central zones of the city. Therefore, the objective of the present work is to investigate how the dichotomy center/periphery is presented in O avesso da pele (2020). From a post-colonial perspective and studies from researchers as Fanon (2008), Gonzales (2012), Kiloma (2019) e Quijano (2009), it intends to analyse how the representation of the characters actions and behaviors in different narrative spaces is capable of emphasize the violence against the black people in the Brazilian society.