Entre violência herdada e ruptura: decolonialidade e infância em Longe de mim, de Lindevania Martins

Abstract

This article analyzes the short story Longe de mim (2019), by contemporary writer Lindevania Martins, from a decolonial perspective, aiming to understand how the coloniality of gender structures the protagonist’s experience of early maturation. The narrative challenges the universalized notion of childhood by presenting the trajectory of Josi, a girl situated within a context of social vulnerability marked by domestic violence and affective instability. In this setting, childhood ceases to function as a space of protection and becomes shaped by demands that anticipate responsibilities, as well as by gender-based violence, imposing a premature understanding of the adult world. Grounded in the contributions of Walter Mignolo (2017), Maria Lugones (2020), Lélia Gonzalez (2020), and Rita Segato (2021), this qualitative study demonstrates how modernity produces dynamics of exclusion that, intensified by gender and socioeconomic conditions, also affect childhood. It is argued that early maturation does not constitute an isolated phenomenon, but rather results from historical legacies of subordination. However, by inscribing an unexpected gesture of rupture, the narrative points to the possibility of a fissure within this cycle, enabling a decolonial reading of the dynamics that emerge within the story.