Black motherhood in Um defeito de cor: Literary representation as disruption of nationalism

Abstract

Written as letter of a black mother to her disappeared child, the novel Um defeito de cor, by Ana Maria Gonçalves (2006), urges us to reflect about the representation of black motherhood in Brazilian literature. In this article, I critically recover the stereotype of the “mãe preta” to analyze how Um defeito de cor deconstructs and literarily inscribes a complex experience of black motherhood that is disruptive to Brazil's nationalist discourse in that it reveals its ideological and racist dimension.