Ambivalent figurations of a possible childhood in the post abolition in Raiz de um negro brasileiro, by Oswaldo de Camargo

Abstract

The paper aims to analyze in Raiz de um negro brasileiro: esboço autobiográfico (2015), by Oswaldo de Camargo, which connects childhood and old age through a narrator characterized by the awareness of the consequences of being black. This procedure ascribes complexity to the black experience by showing the differences that cross it and allows a new look at the post-abolition, discovering a possible, but ambivalent childhood, which difficulties the distinction between reinvention and subjection.