RIVER-FATHER, TEAR-MOTHER: FAMILY AND GENDER IN GUIMARÃES ROSA AND CONCEIÇÃO EVARISTO

FAMÍLIA E GÊNERO EM GUIMARÃES ROSA E CONCEIÇÃO EVARISTO

Abstract

In “A terceira margem do rio” (“The Third Bank of the River”), by Guimarães Rosa, and “Olhos d’água” (“Watery Eyes”), by Conceição Evaristo, the plots are developed with contributions from the encounters and mismatches among parents and children. As a landscape that meanders through this “parenthood”, in the first, there is a river; and in the second, tears. In both narratives, son and daughter, respectively, who find themselves in the space of absence (the disappearance of the father and the uncertainty of the color of the mother’s eyes), undertake a search for an image, both paternal and maternal, that can configure a presence. Those two images trigger identities of masculine and feminine, of paternity and maternity, as spaces that transit between history and intimacy, affection and power. Both plots rely on several other operational readings, such as social issues in the countryside and the city. Therefore, our theoretical foundation includes a historical and sociological approach (Ariès, 1981; Perrot, 1991; Elias, 1994), philosophical (Badiou, 1995; Han, 2023) and the theory about blackness and ancestry (Oliveira, 2018). In the end, in both plots, water is the conductor of the identities that are constructed in the stories and reconfigure the places of mother-father-daughter-son.