Memória afro-dispórica, gênero e colonialidade em 'Meridiana', de Eliana Alves Cruz

Abstract

This article analyzes the novel Meridiana (2025), by Eliana Alves Cruz, aiming to investigate how the narrative constructs a literary archive of Afro-diasporic memory through experiences shaped by gender and coloniality, as well as how it reconfigures the transmission of historical trauma. The study is guided by the following question: how does the novel articulate memory, body, and language to reinscribe historically silenced experiences? Drawing on theoretical frameworks such as Caruth (1996), Quijano (2005), Derrida (2001), González (2020), and Mbembe (2018), it argues that the novel operates as a counter-archive in which trauma emerges as a structural experience, transmitted through repetition, silence, and intergenerational relations. The findings indicate that the narrative shifts memory from the realm of inheritance to that of practice, enabling critical forms of elaboration and rupture within Afro-diasporic experience.

Keywords: memory; deoloniality; trauma; gender; archive.