Vidas mínimas: representação da violência sobre crianças negras em dois contos de Marcelino Freire

Abstract

Studies by the Brazilian Forum on Public Safety indicate that, of the nearly 35,000 youth deaths in Brazil between 2016 and 2020, 80% were Black. Between 2017 and 2018, more than 858,000 cases of missing persons were registered in the country, according to the National Council of Justice (2021), with an estimated 40% of those being Black children and adolescents. This brutal reality imposed on Black lives is represented in the literature of Marcelino Freire, particularly in the short stories “Socorrinho” and “Faz de Conta que Não Foi. Nada” (Freire, 2019). His literature can be placed within a broader body of texts that aim to depict the violence constitutive of Brazilian culture (Pelegrini, 2005). Thus, on one hand, we observe a social reality marked by exclusion and violence, and on the other, its representation, which, according to our reading hypothesis, may be shaped by an ambivalence that points both to the denunciation of and the search for overcoming this reality, as well as to a figuration of exoticism intended to appease the audience. The fact remains that children—especially Black children—are neglected by a perverse policy that encroaches upon life and annihilates it (Mbembe, 2018). If we understand that all lives are worthy of being lived and even mourned (Butler, 2022), as the selected stories seem to suggest, then both the denunciation of a world dominated by powers that violate children's bodies and the stylization of poverty and violence must serve as tools for reflecting on reality and the language that represents it, as can be observed, for example, in the stylistic organization of the stories. From this thematic and stylistic reading, we aim to draw reflections both on the social reality and on the literary creation of the short story writer Marcelino Freire.