Rachel de Queiroz (Fortaleza, November 17, 1910 - Rio de Janeiro, November 4, 2003) was an important writer and journalist Brazilian. Known for being the first woman to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters, the author collected awards and tributes during his 92 years of life. Among the honors received, it is worth mentioning the Camões Award (1993) – the greatest honor that a writer can receive in Portuguese.
Features
Rachel Queiroz belongs to 1930's modernist movement. This group is known as regionalist, given that her works focus on issues such as the drought in the northeast, misery, oppression and the villainy of the powerful in the face of the suffering of the poorest. The romance the fifteen it is one of the main examples of this type of literature. In addition to regionalism, Rachel de Queiroz also wrote works on politics, psychological novels and children's literature.
Read too: Ana Maria Machado's fantastic literary universe
Construction
Rachel de Queiroz's best known work is her first book, the fifteen, narrative that tells the story of a retreatant family. However, from 1930 (the date on which she made her first publication) until the end of her life - since the author never stopped writing –, it is possible to see different faces of the same writer. if the romance the fifteen it has a regionalist style, similar to the narratives of Graciliano Ramos, José Lins do Rego and Jorge Amado, in other works it is possible to see other trends.
In Stone way (1937), for example, it is possible to find an author more involved with political and ideological issues. Already in the three maries (1939), on the other hand, we can find a Rachel de Queiroz who presents a intimate style, full of reflections and psychological analysis of a female character who experiences teenage conflicts.
Thus, it is not possible to label the writer's work, as she produced a complex and extremely high-quality literary set that will always be among the essentials of Brazilian literature. See, below, the main works of Rachel de Queiroz:
- the fifteen (1930)
- John Michael (1932)
- Stone path (1937)
- the three maries (1939)
- The maiden and the crooked moor (1948)
- Lamp (1953)
- Blessed Mary of Egypt (1957)
- 100 chosen chronicles (1958)
- the perplexed Brazilian (1964)
- the armadillo hunter (1967)
- the magic boy (1967)
- Dora, Doralina (1975)
- Little girls and other chronicles (1976)
- The pool player and more stories (1980)
- the golden rooster (1985)
- Cafute and Silver Pen (1986)
- Maria Moura Memorial (1992)
- the rough lands (1993)
- theater (1995)
- false sea, false world (2002)
Read too: Ruth Rocha's magical world
the fifteen
the fifteen is the main work of Rachel de Queiroz. It tells the story of Chico Bento, a cowboy who lost his job due to the great drought of 1915, and his family. The characters migrate from the Ceará backlands to Recife, capital of Pernambuco. After not finding ways to survive in the new city, the drought survivors once again migrate, this time to São Paulo.
A curiosity about this novel is that, like the characters in the novel, Rachel de Queiroz also lived through the drought of 1915 and, with her family, migrated fleeing death.
See, below, an excerpt that narrates the first night that the family of the cowboy Chico Bento withdrew:
“On the first night, they broke into a hut that appeared along the road, like a landing that a charitable soul had set up there for the migrants […] The cowboy went to the saddlebags and came with a blanket of dried goat meat and a sack full of flour, with quarters of brown sugar in it […] The women had already improvised a shaker and lit the fire. And the meat was roasted over the coals, sizzling and crackling the salt”.
