The little girl who didn’t want to be black. Maria Mazarello Rodrigues and Mazza Edições: a history of the book in Brazil from dictatorship to law 10 639

Abstract

In this article, we propose to address the issue of the emergence of black and mixed race voices in Brazil through the study of a
publishing house specializing in publications dealing with cultural, ethnic and «racial» issues. Margins are creative, as Mattei Dogan and Robert Pahre have clearly shown in Creative Marginality: Innovation At The Intersections Of Social Sciences. But he deplored the fact that he often had little precise information on the cases studied. They would have «liked to have more information on the individual careers of hybrid scientists. Biographies can, to a certain extent, shed light on the processes of hybridization». The analysis of the history of Mazza Edições will illustrate this phenomenon with a specific example. In order to grasp these dynamics, and in particular the writing of history in a «marginal» situation or cultural creation, we will be able to draw on the catalogue of Mazza Edições and in particular the titles in anthropology, sociology, history and educational sciences in which she specialised. It is therefore a question of highlighting these experiences of creation and publishing, as well as their processes and the action of these «writers from the margins» but also of their publisher, this little girl who did not want to be black because of the illustrated books of her childhood and who became an important figure of the movimento negro in Brazil.