The The right to doubt

decolonization in Dear Martin, by Nic Stone

Abstract

Starting from the candidian premise that all literature has as its premise three integrated faces, namely: a significant structure; a way of expressing feelings and worldviews; and a form of knowledge, which we can apprehend in a verbose and unconscious way, we aim to analyze how the aesthetic construction of the young adult novel Dear Martin (2020), by the north-american writer Nic Stone, collaborates with the relations between the (des)construction of thought, the writing and minorized Young adult identities. To carry out this analysis, we will base ourselves on the theoretical assumptions of Hunt (2005; 2015), on Children's Literature, which we will use as inspiration to reflect on Young Adult Literature; in the concepts of Identity and Multiculturalism, in Hall (2006) and Bonnici (2011), respectively; and in the concepts of trauma and decolonization, in Kilomba (2021). Through an aesthetic that breaks literary stereotypes, the writer also breaks identity stereotypes, by demonstrating how a minorized young person deals with the oppressive cultural and social systems that pervade their existence. In the impossibility of finding a space that welcomes him, the character creates his own spaces in the deep world of his conscience, which are transfigured into his real life.