Black authors shake up Brazil's literary scene
by Ernesto Londoño
RIO DE JANEIRO.- Itamar Vieira Júnior, whose day job working for the Brazilian government on land reform took him deep into the impoverished countryside, knew next to nothing about the mainstream publishing industry when he put the final touches on a novel he had been writing on and off for decades.
On a whim, in April 2018, he sent the manuscript for “Torto Arado,” which means crooked plow, to a literary contest in Portugal, wondering what the jury would make of the hardscrabble tale of two sisters in a rural district in northeastern Brazil where the legacy of slavery remains palpable.
“I wanted to see if anyone saw value in it,” Vieira, 42, said. “But I didn’t have much hope.”
To his astonishment, “Torto Arado” won the 2018 LeYa award, a major Portuguese-language literary prize focused on discovering new voices. The recognition jump-started Vieira’s career, making him a leading voice among the Black authors who have jolted Brazil’s literary establishment in recent years with imaginative and searing works that have found commercial success and critical acclaim.
“Torto Arado” was the bestselling book in Brazil in 2021, with more than 300,000 copies sold to date. The previous year, that distinction went to Djamila Ribeiro’s “A Little Anti-Racist Handbook,” a succinct and plainly written dissection of systemic racism in Brazil.
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