Samba schools honor Black Brazilian female authors during their Carnival parades

RIO DE JANEIRO (AP) — Samba and literature rarely share the same stage, but at this year's Carnival in Rio de Janeiro, two samba schools used their parades to tell the stories of Black Brazilian female authors. It's an unusual recognition of writers who have been historically marginalized due to their race and gender.

On Saturday, 79-year-old Conceição Evaristo, a writer from Minas Gerais known for her powerful works centering on Black women's experiences, sat majestically atop a float designed by samba school Imperio Serrano at Rio’s famed Sambodrome. Two days later, the samba school Unidos da Tijuca dedicated its parade to the late Carolina Maria de Jesus, a favela-based diarist who died nearly five decades ago, and also featured Evaristo.

“For Black women in Brazil everything is very difficult,” Evaristo said during an interview at the school's warehouse while preparations were in full swing. The parade, she said, “presents other forms of knowledge that are born in Black communities” while celebrating Brazil’s diversity.

Samba is a Brazilian music and dance genre driven by syncopated rhythms that grew out of Afro-Brazilian traditions. Every year, schools based in low-income neighborhoods spend months preparing a parade complete with a samba song, towering floats and dazzling costumes, which they then present to judges at a fierce competition during Carnival.

Themes are often entwined with political messaging. This year, Porto da Pedra advocated for greater rights for sex workers, while schools in previous years have criticized former President Jair Bolsonaro or called attention to the plight of the Yanomami Indigenous people.

In the early hours of Tuesday morning, dancers, performers and percussionists from the Unidos da Tijuca school made their way down the Sambodrome’s central alley while a song about de Jesus rang out across the grounds. Books of all shapes, sizes and colors featured prominently on the floats and costumes.

It was “an act of historical reparation,” according to a leaflet presenting the parades at the venue, which also said that de Jesus died poor and forgotten in 1977.

‘No single writing style’

Both de Jesus and Evaristo rose from humble backgrounds. In the 1950s, de Jesus kept a diary that chronicled her struggles to earn an income and feed her three children in a poor, urban community known as a favela in Sao Paulo.

Her diary has sold more than a million copies since its 1960 publication, according to a website dedicated to de Jesus run by the prestigious museum Instituto Moreira Salles.

While some critics have dismissed de Jesus' work as simplistic, Evaristo defends her unconventional style.

“The Brazilian model cannot choose a single language model ... based, for example, on European cultures,” said Evaristo, whose acclaimed works include the 2003 novel “Poncia Vivencio,” about a Black woman who leaves rural Brazil to try her luck in a city, and the 2014 collection of short stories “Water Eyes."

For actor Maria Gal, who portrays de Jesus in an upcoming film and during the parade, the late author remains relevant in contemporary Brazil because of her focus on education, gender equality and sustainable development.

“We are a country that often ends up forgetting our own history. And yet we have an incredibly rich cultural history. Carolina illustrates this very powerfully,” Gal said.

Black women in Brazil continue to face systemic discrimination. They are more likely than white women to be poor, illiterate and to suffer from hunger. They are also at greater risk of being a victim of gender-based violence.

Last year, Ana Maria Gonçalves became the first Black woman to earn a seat at the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the country’s most exclusive literature body. Yet, despite the milestone, scholars argue that racial and gender bias still define the academy's history.

“I have no doubt about the fact that if Conceição Evaristo were a white man, she would already be a part of the Brazilian Academy of Letters,” said Felipe Fanuel Xavier Rodrigues, a literature professor at the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro.

The parades are a transformative political act, Rodrigues said. “Carnival suspends everyday rules, including those of a structurally racist society like ours. It's when a crack appears.”

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