The haunting and the wonderfoul real in Amazon oral narrative

The Tree Woman

Abstract

This article aims to analyze the haunting element and its relationship with the marvelous real into the oral narrative The Tree Woman, popularly known in the Porto Velho-Rondônia region. Throughout the domination of Amazonia, black and indigenous women have been made invisible, their bodies objectified and exploited, revealing doubly colonizing practices in gender relations and ethnic differences evidenced in the narratives circulating in this region. The haunting figure of the woman, in the shape of a tree, brings her image closer to the monstrous. That same monstrosity is part of the marvelous element that makes a woman emerge from the tree. The results indicate that, in the women’s inferiorizing process in the Amazon region, the fear presented in the haunting - and often monstrous and in a witch shape - was and continues to be strategically used in colonizing practices in gender relations, in a systemic and structural way, maintaining patriarchal and sexist attitudes towards women.