ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses how the genre of the Bildungsroman is employed in Um defeito de cor to broach issues of human rights vis-a-vis slavery. According to Joseph Slaughter the Bildungsroman and the narrative of human rights create complementary visions of the "human personality that ratifies the other's vision of the ideal relations between the individual and society". Ana Maria Goncalves's novel not only exemplifies Slaughter's assertion of the interface between the idealist Bildungsroman and the discourse of human rights. Human rights are both a praxis and a narrative. Storytelling generates not only awareness of human rights and its violations, but also establishes empathy, which in turn can translate into action. Slaughter sees the Bildungsroman as a "novelistic correlative to the socializing project of human rights law". The protagonist's formative process serves as the background against which to articulate a narrative of human rights.
