“We agreed not to die”: The escrevivência of erê Rosinha, the girl from the house of winds and waters

Abstract

This text proposes to reflect on the relationship between Black childhoods, Candomblé, and escrevivências based on my experience as a Black terreiro woman, educator, and poet. The reflections carried out here stem from my interest in dialoguing with Black and non-Black people about the existence of ancestral children, also called erês, who live through the bodies of initiates and carry characteristics linked to the Orixás. My intent is also to dialogue about the religious racism present in the lives of children initiated into the African religion and to show possibilities for narratives of life and ancestry through the existence of children who live between the Ayê and the Orum. For this, I resort to theoretical productions on Black childhoods (Nogueira, 2019), children in Candomblé (Caputo, 2012, 2020), and the concept of escrevivência (Evaristo, 2005, 2020) to contribute to the debate on Black childhoods and the confrontation of religious racism. In light of this research, I evaluate the need to broaden the debate around studies involving terreiro children and, above all, to create more strategies for confronting the crime of religious racism.