July 13, 2025
‘Um Defeito de Cor’ writer joins 128-year-old literary establishment lengthy led by white males.
Regardless of Brazil’s standing as one of many international locations with the biggest Black populations on the planet, its literary academy has remained largely white, and with out a Black lady member of that physique. Nevertheless, this modified on July 10, when Ana Maria Gonçalves was named the Brazilian Academy of Letters’ latest member.
Based on The Guardian, the 54-year-old Gonçalves’ election is being celebrated extensively in Brazil as an indication of progress, and she or he holds a outstanding area as one in all Brazil’s most celebrated modern authors.
In a putting endorsement, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote in a celebratory publish that Conçalves’ most well-known e-book, “Um defeito de cor (A Colour Defect)” was his “companion” throughout his 580 day keep in jail and identified his personal advocacy for the e-book. “I at all times make some extent of recommending it to everybody,” da Silva stated.
“A Colour Defect,” which has but to be translated into English, is a 900-page historic novel set in North America. Gonçalves calls the novel “the historical past of Brazil informed from the perspective of a Black lady,” and identified in her personal feedback that the diversification of Brazil’s nationwide literary academy is sorely missing.
“I’m the primary Black lady, however I can’t be the one one. I can’t carry the burden of representing a complete inhabitants that continues to be marginalized and that’s itself extremely various,” she informed Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo, which named her 2006 e-book as the best work of Brazilian literature thus far within the twenty first Century.
Although the primary president of Brazil’s nationwide literary academy was a Black man, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, who can be thought-about the best author in Brazilian historical past, the academy, which remains to be largely regarded as the Home of Machado de Assis, has lacked Black individuals in it since his presidency.
This has constantly been some extent of rivalry for a lot of in a rustic the place greater than half the inhabitants consists of individuals of African descent. Notably, Conçalves has been crucial of the shape and performance of racism in Brazilian society, explored in North American media by way of a pair of op-eds printed by The Intercept in 2017.
In a single, she described a Brazilian academia that engaged within the erasure of a Black lady, Virgínia Leone Bicudo, who pioneered the sphere of psychoanalysis in Brazil.
Within the second, Gonçalves explored a social dynamic wherein white girls undertake kinds historically related to Black girls, comparable to head wraps, whereas deflecting criticism by leaning on perceptions of innocence. In her writing, the top wrap, generally worn inside the African diaspora, served as a metaphor for the broader commercialization of Black tradition.
The problems addressed in her two op-eds—together with critiques of racism and white supremacist attitudes—are a part of what makes her appointment to the Brazilian Academy of Letters notable to many in Brazil. Poet and translator Stephane Borges informed The Guardian she hopes Conçalves’ appointment will assist create extra alternatives for Black girls to take part in Brazil’s literary panorama.
“When it’s us telling our personal tales, we invite those that appear to be us to return nearer to literature,” Borges stated.
Conçalves appears to agree and informed The Guardian that she plans to make use of what affect she has to create change inside the nationwide academy.
“The academy does want extra girls, extra Black individuals, Indigenous individuals, and folks from different elements of Brazil,” Gonçalves stated. “And I hope that now, from the within, I might help make that occur.”
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