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This essay aims to shed light on how Esa esquina del paraíso (1986), by the Panamanian author Rosa María Britton (1936-2019), reveals the pedagogical process through which girls in their family context learn to interpret themselves and highlights how the implications of the episteme from which they read and interpret their bodies has consequences in their life projects. The text presents the relationship between Rosa, a woman “of dark hair and dark skin” [“de pelo negro y piel oscura”] who raises her daughters Eugenia and Clotilde by herself in the Panamanian context of 1957-1977. Rosa inculcates in her daughters an epistemic framework, a way of interpreting others, the body of others and their own. Among her daughters, Eugenia is the blonde and white-skinned of the family, while Clotilde shares the hair and skin traits of her mother. Both daughters have internalized the interpretation of the white bodies as model and paradigmatic of what is human. Interpretation that has its important consequences in each one's life, given that Eugenia has been taught that she needs to improve the race and reject every relationship or marriage that sets the family back, whereas Clotilde is seen as the reason for that setback. Both characters have learnt to read in their bodies a series of signs that diminish their humanity, therefore feel compelled to associate or mix with other bodies, specifically white ones, that allow them to attain a status recognized as fully human.
Este obra está bajo una licencia de Creative Commons Reconocimiento-NoComercial-CompartirIgual 4.0 Internacional.
