Queer narratives in the line of Aline Zouvi

Abstract

Aline Zouvi is a Brazilian comic artist who produces fictional and autobiographical narratives in which queer bodies are protagonists. In this article, her books Síncope (Self-published, 2017) and Não nasci sabendo (Selo Harvi, 2022) will be analyzed, investigating how such comics are representative for understanding the current Brazilian scene of this cultural medium, as well as the possible reflections from the aesthetic genres in which they are inscribed and the themes of these books. In this sense, Zouvi’s work denotes key elements of the Brazilian comic book context, such as the predominance of self-publishing and publication through small publishing labels, in addition to the active use of social media for promoting work and engaging with readers. Furthermore, the format of the books under analysis, closer to a chronicle than to a novel, suggests that experimentalism and creative freedom stem more from transformations in the social landscape, such as the increasing openness to works by women and to queer themes, than from a specific publishing format like graphic novels. In her work, experimentation, both with the medium and with herself, paves the way for interaction between forms and works, shaping, in this process, a style of her own.