THE BLACK-BRAZILIAN NARRATIVE AND THE ANTI-RACIST PROJECT OF IN MY SKIN, BY LÁZARO RAMOS
black literature; Brazilian black literature; anti-racism; blackness; memoir.
Black literature has increasingly become a topic to be studied and discussed.
Contemporarily, texts written by black people who openly address blackness have
been looked at from a different angle. It is in this scenario that I propose the analysis
of Na Minha Pele [On my Skin] (2017), by Lázaro Ramos. A memorialist narrative that
is not limited by a single genre and bleeds a few margins, this book is the author’s first
non-fiction work. This study, guided by the reflections of Cuti (2010a; 2010b), Souza
(2006; 2010) and Evaristo (2009; 2010), among other authors, investigates where this
publication fits into the contemporary scenario of black literature and discusses it under
the lens of an antiracist approach to blackness. To achieve that, I attempt to scrutinize
how the text is woven not only to highlight the author’s biography but also to challenge,
question, and invite the reader to reflect. In that sense, I analyze choices made by
Ramos, how he inserts certain provocations into the narrative, and how he stablishes
a dialogue with other actors, authors, and artists. In addition to that, I aim to reflect
upon this book’s potential as a literary pedagogical tool against racism, as it proposes
an observation of the past, present and future.