Amazonian Dialogues in the Amazon: Cosmologies of Becoming in Children's Literature Books in Classroom Contexts

cosmologias do devir nos livros de literatura infantil em contexto de sala de aula

Abstract

This article stems from a Postdoctoral research project linked to the Graduate Program in Education in the Amazon (EDUCANORTE/UEA), conducted between August 2024 and June 2025, which investigated ways of being and indigenous children's corporealities present in literary books used in public schools in Manaus, with children aged 4 to 5 years. The study focused on institutions in the East and North zones of the city, analyzing how literary narratives enable (or fail to enable) the expression of indigenous children's identities in urban contexts. Ten children's literature books used in pedagogical practices were identified, with emphasis on Daniel Munduruku's collection - "Stories I Heard and Like to Tell," "Stories I Read and Like to Tell," and "Stories I Lived and Like to Tell" (Callis Editora, 2010-2011) - selected as the core analysis corpus. The theoretical-methodological approach combined the post-critical field in Education, the philosophy of Difference, and decolonial perspectives, using qualitative analysis and image analysis to explore visual and textual narratives as dynamic elements in the production of identities and corporealities.

The results demonstrate that Munduruku's works, by creating tension between indigenous and Western knowledge systems, function as devices for resistance and identity reinvention, standing out as pedagogical tools capable of: decolonizing imaginaries by presenting Amazonian ways of being not reduced to stereotypes; enhancing the ecology of knowledges by validating indigenous epistemologies in Early Childhood Education; and narrating bodies and identities in becoming, breaking with essentialisms and affirming difference as potency.