African diaspora, interlanguages, and the unconscious

This article examines Ana Maria Gonçalves’ novel Um Defeito de Cor (A Colour Defect), published in 2006; a fiction intertwined with history, memory, languages, and cultures of black Africans brought to Brazil, and describing mainly Salvador in the mid-19th century, developed within the gaps of the limited historical records of enslaved people. It analyses the subjective experiences of the protagonist, Kehinde, as she navigates multiple languages and cultures. It explores the unconscious impacts of exposure to a plurality of languages, informed by Lélia Gonzalez’s concept of ‘Pretoguês’, which highlights the influence of African languages on Portuguese.