Ruth Guimaraes was born on June 13, 1920, in the city of Cachoeira Paulista, in São Paulo. She studied Philosophy and Letters at the University of São Paulo, wrote books, translated, worked as a teacher and was also Secretary of Culture in her hometown.
The novelist, who died on May 21, 2014, in Cachoeira Paulista, is one of the main black Brazilian writers. your romance deep water, published in 1946, has traces of fantastic realism, in addition to valuing the regional culture of the south of Minas Gerais.
Know more: Conceição Evaristo — author whose works are marked by the protagonism of black women
Topics of this article
- 1 - Summary about Ruth Guimarães
- 2 - Biography of Ruth Guimarães
- 3 - Characteristics of the work of Ruth Guimarães
- 4 - Works by Ruth Guimarães
- 5 - Literary analysis of the work Água Funda, by Ruth Guimarães
- 6 - Translations by Ruth Guimarães
- 7 - Quotes by Ruth Guimarães
Summary about Ruth Guimarães
Brazilian author Ruth Guimarães was born in 1920 and died in 2014.
She was an important writer of black literature.
In addition to being a writer, she was also a teacher, translator and Secretary of Culture.
Her books are characterized by folklore and regionalist elements.
Her most famous work is her debut novel deep water.
Do not stop now... There's more after the publicity ;)
Biography of Ruth Guimaraes
Ruth Guimaraes was born on June 13, 1920, in Cachoeira Paulista, in the state of Sao Paulo. At the age of ten, she published her first poems in periodicals at the time. Later, in 1938, she moved to Sao Paulo City, where she took courses in Philosophy and Literature at USP.
Shortly before the writer's death Mario de Andrade (1893–1945), he assisted the writer in researching national folk tales. The author's discoveries in this field gave rise to the book The children of fear, but in 1946 she published her first novel: deep water.
She also studied Dramaturgy and Criticism at the USP School of Dramatic Art, coordinated by actor Alfredo Mesquita (1907–1986) and founded in 1948. In addition, she has written for various periodicals such as:
São Paulo Mail;
The Gazette;
Sao Paulo Diary;
Morning Sheet;
The State of St. Paul;
Globe;
Lusitana Magazine.
The author was also a Portuguese teacher for more than 30 years in public schools in São Paulo. In addition, she was one of the first black writers to be valued in the Brazil. However, only in 2008 she was elected to occupy a place at the Academia Paulista de Letras. That year, she also commanded the Secretary of Culture of Cachoeira Paulista. She passed away on May 21, 2014, in the same city.
Characteristics of the work of Ruth Guimarães
The works of Ruth Guimarães have the following characteristics:
folk elements;
marks of indigenous culture;
praise of black culture;
fantastic realism;
social criticism;
regionalism;
hillbilly language;
appreciation of orality.
Read too: Black people in Brazilian literature — how does this representation occur?
Works by Ruth Guimarães
deep water (1946)
The children of fear (1950)
famous women (1960)
Mothers in Legend and History (1960)
religious leaders (1961)
Legends and Fables of Brazil (1972)
dictionary of greek mythology (1972)
The caboclo world of Valdomiro Silveira (1974)
History's Great Enigmas (1975)
Magic medicine: the sympathies (1986)
Legends and Fables of Brazil (1989)
chronicles valeparaibanas (1992)
small town tales (1996)
Calidoscope: the saga of Pedro Malazarte (2006)
Literary analysis of the workdeep waterThe, by Ruth Guimarães
![Cover of the book “Água Funda”, by Ruth Guimarães, published by Editora 34. [2]](/f/da375b7dd05bd9e67a9ee7573b7aba4a.jpg)
O romancedeep water Its narrative space is the farm Nossa Senhora dos Olhos d’Água and the city of Pedra Branca, in the south of Minas Gerais. The time of the narrative is the end of the 19th century and the beginning of the 20th century. The farm is owned by Sinhá Carolina, a woman who maintains a sugar cane production.
Sinhá Carolina is the character of the first part of the book and she is shown in a still slave context in her youth, at the time of her marriage, and as a widow, her when she sells her land to live a romantic story with a young man, who makes her lose everything, including her sanity. Curiango, on the other hand, is Carolina's great-niece and marries Joca. However, the girl's family no longer owns land or wealth.
Joca is the protagonist of the second part of the work, which highlights the caipira culture. Thus, the narrator shows the transition period between the slavery and free work. Joca, a rural worker, drover and stoker, ends up going crazy and goes in search of the Mother of Gold, a folkloric character in the region.
Thus, cultural, moral, social, gender, class and race issues are discussed. The work also focuses on the theme of madness, associated with the characters Joca and Sinhá Carolina. This characteristic unites the two protagonists of the book, despite the fact that they belong to different worlds.
See too:Noémia de Souza — Mozambican writer whose works extol African culture
Translations by Ruth Guimarães
fascinating stories, by Honoré de Balzac (1960)
the golden donkey, by Apuleius (1963)
The Brightest Tales of Dostoevsky (1966)
Tales of Dostoevsky (1985)
Tales of Balzac (1986)
The best short stories by F. Dostoevsky (1987)
Balzac's Best Tales (1988)
Quotes by Ruth Guimarães
Next, we are going to read some phrases by Ruth Guimarães, taken from an interview given to the newspaper the lynx, in 2008:
“My life was oriented towards writing.”
“When things have to be, it seems like everything goes in that direction.”
“I am a storyteller to this day.”
“I didn't decide to write a book, no. The book wrote itself.”
“The [author] I most admire and with whom I agree in total is Machado de Assis.”
“Given an opinion without having a good basis is also a sin.”
“A word that is not popular is a dead word.”
Image credits:
[1] Unipalmares Publisher (reproduction)
[2] Publisher 34 (reproduction)
By Warley Souza
Literature Teacher
Would you like to reference this text in a school or academic work? Look:
SOUZA, Warley. "Ruth Guimaraes"; Brazil School. Available in: https://brasilescola.uol.com.br/literatura/ruth-guimaraes.htm. Accessed on April 20, 2023.
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