The Dead Lizard (A Lagartixa Defunta)

Abstract (English)

The Dead Lizard (A Lagartixa Defunta) is a children's book based on ethnographic research conducted during the COVID-19 pandemic within a Romani settlement of the Calon ethnic group, located in Quissamã, Rio de Janeiro, Brazil. Narrated through the perspective of Yara, a criante-brincante, meaning a child who continuously invents her own playful activities, the story illustrates how Calon children transformed their encounter with a dead lizard into a ritualized farewell game. Through playful interaction, the narrative emphasizes cultural transmission, oral tradition, and collective identity practices among Calon childhoods. By organizing an improvised funeral, the children incorporate symbolic gestures of Calon culture, such as crafting a cross, burying objects, and collectively creating narratives, demonstrating their deep awareness of rituals, ancestry, and belonging. This literary work breaks from dominant children's literature by bringing forward Calon/Romani voices and experiences, making visible a historically silenced community through poetic, child-centered writing. Incorporating original concepts such as campo-brincante (the space chosen by children for autonomous play), criante-brincante (the child who invents and redefines play), and criante-narrante (the child who narrates and creates simultaneously), developed in the author’s doctoral thesis (Marques, 2023), the book provides new epistemological tools for considering childhood and play as political, cultural, and narrative acts. In total, the author has published five children's books derived from ethnographic research, each illustrating the daily lives and authentic play practices of Calon children. Four books were self-funded by the author’s own efforts, without any external financial support. Furthermore, all four works feature illustrations by Calon artists who were specifically contracted for this project, allowing the children from the communities involved to recognize themselves genuinely represented in the visual narratives. Despite the innovative and culturally relevant nature of the project, institutional barriers were encountered. The author presented these works along with a detailed pedagogical proposal to the education departments of the municipalities where the research took place,Quissamã and Carapebus. However, the project and the donated books were systematically rejected, highlighting institutional resistance and perpetuating the symbolic exclusion of Romani identities in the educational and editorial fields. This Book Seminar aims to discuss the intersections between anthropology, children's literature, Calon identity, and decolonial pedagogies, critically reflecting on structural barriers and the creative-narrating necropolitics, Mbembe (2018), that continue to affect Romani communities in Brazil.