Bom Crioulo's echos

Representation and permanence

Abstract

This paper sought to analyze the permanence of the image of the black homosexual man in Brazilian literature, whose origins go back to the novel Bom Crioulo, by Adolfo Caminha, from 1895. The narrative deals with the interracial love relationship between two sailors and its representation, problematic in terms of blackness and homosexuality, persists in contemporary literary works, both from the 20th and 21st centuries. In this way, by comparing the figuration of affection or the attempt at affective relationships between men in the 19th century book and the short stories “O estivador”, by Harry Laus, and “Coração”, by Marcelino Freire, it was intended to analyze how the black and homosexual protagonist is still dependent on a controversial representation, mainly related to the dichotomy of virility and effeminacy, both related to hypersexualization and the fetish of the black body, invariably culminating in loneliness related to the impossibility of bonds that escape sexual labels. The limitation of possibilities related to this representation was also questioned, which conditions ways of being, existing and loving not only of the characters in the narratives, but of the subjects stereotyped by the imaginary of whiteness. Such issues were conducted by discussions proposed by Miskolci (2012) and Benítez (2006), about the imbrication, in the construction of real and fictionalized subjects, between homosexuality and blackness, and by Shohat and Stam (2006), about the problems of representation of minority groups. As a result, the recurrence of stereotypes in the literary constitution of the beings presented is concluded, linked to affective loneliness and sexualization, extreme by effeminacy and virility, even in narratives published in three different centuries.