Deconstructing Heteronormativity in Children's Literature: The Impact of Narratives on Human Relationships and Worldview

Abstract

The possibility of standardizing and conserving the so-called normal characteristics of society means that diversities are suppressed or made invisible. Social institutions, including the school, are used in the strategy of maintaining this power relationship. Heteronormativity is found within the school and can be subtly perceived in the curriculum, institutional norms, architecture, music and children's literature. This work aims to analyze children's books that address the most diverse family formations that we find in our society and their representation, considering the new family compositions. For that, the Foucauldian perspective of resistance was used with the contribution of Literary Theory in dialogue with authors of Cultural and Gender Studies. Approaching, the book for childhood as a cultural artifact that produces and/or reproduces and conveys in its text (verbal and illustrative) the representations of gender and heteronormative models. Thus, we observe the existence of stereotypes of families, a patriarchal and romanticized model. In this way, using literature as a pedagogical tool to work on the theme of new family configurations at school is to provide children with a meaningful learning process, in which differences are respected and understood naturally.