An Analysis About the Subjectivity of the “I” in the Metaphors of Color in Work The Brown Boy, by Ziraldo

Abstract

This work develops a critical approach to the literary work The Brown Boy, by the writer Ziraldo. First published in 1986, the book featured as protagonist the brown boy, who ended up knowing and befriending the so-called pink boy. This work described the details of this friendship, in the face of personal curiosities, differences, human values and racial issues. The context of doubt favored, to each of the two boys, the construction of their own identities. This construction can be described under three levels: observation, comparison and relationship. The characters observed themselves, compared their differences and were able to establish a relationship of friendship, discovering traces of humanity, respect and harmonious coexistence in ethnic-racial diversities. Considering that the author has developed a figurative language, the purpose of this research is to analyze the metaphors of color, which allow to level and typify the subjectivity marks of the “I”. An ever-expanding “I”, around you, and from the perspective of the other. For this, the concepts of identity and otherness of Zilá Bernd (1987, 1988) and the postcolonial studies of Frantz Fanon (2008) will be used within a theoretical-methodological framework. Therefore, Ziraldo’s The Brown Boy is an interesting pedagogical instrument of children’s literature to be developed in the classroom, because it disarms the pre-established expectation by European culture, of white prevailing over black, and presents new relations of resignification of the world from the vision of two children.