Children's literature and shameful past: Spaces and events between generations

Abstract

How is political violence narrated in children's literature? What are the senses of the past underlying these narratives? How do generational links permeate the writing of their authors? Through these questions, we intend to explore the ways in which the betweengenerations is configured in Colombian children's literature referring to the country's shameful past. We analyze some works by Triunfo Arciniegas, Jairo Buitrago, and Francisco Montaña to show their configurations of the between-generations based on questions about the intergenerational fabric which permeates these authors' writing and their ways of narrating political violence. In methodological terms, the analysis includes literary and historical aspects considering political and social elements. Based on the analysis of the works proposed in this article, we found some inheritances in which authors bet on the support or change of the social order and the conditions of political violence that emerged within the framework of a restricted democracy since the seventies. We also found legacies to be transmitted to the new generations, in which stares towards the shameful past are put into play from the referents of writers in the present. Because of this generational inter/between, the writers build in their works wagers for the transformation of the future in which a look to the past is a fundamental part because it is revisited and resignified. The findings show that children's literature, as a cultural artifact, participates in the social and political world, offering possibilities of breaking away from the shameful past and the construction of different senses about the past.