Writer Maria Firmina dos Reis has been selected to be honored at the traditional Paraty International Literary Festival, Flip, the first in person in two years. The writer is the fifth woman to receive a tribute and the first black woman. Clarice Lispector, Ana Cristina César, Hilda Hilst and Elizabeth Bishop have already been selected.
“Maria Firmina’s memorable characters and narratives have inspired reading collectives, teachers and contemporary writers with her language, imagery and approaches to a real and fictional Brazil undergoing two hundred years of disputed independence,” Flip’s board of trustees said in a statement to the press.
But who was Maria Firmina dos Reis? So that you can learn a little more about the honored writer, echo separately five oddities about them.
First author to have published a novel in Brazil
Maria Firmina dos Reis wasn’t just the first black woman to be honored by Flip. She pioneered many other things in literature. The Maranhense is the author of “Ursula”, the first novel published by a woman and a black woman in Brazil.
It was also the first abolitionist novel to deal with the end of slavery told from the point of view of the enslaved written in Portuguese.
Title page of the first edition of the book “Ursula”, published in 1859 by Maria Firmina dos Reis
Image: public domain
Ursula: a milestone for Brazil
Can you imagine how crazy it was for Brazilian slave society to see a black woman publish a book in 1859, 29 years before slavery ended? Thus Maria Firmina and her most famous work, although she was a pioneer, fell into oblivion. Only recently has the author and her book been studied and read more.
“[Maria Firmina dos Reis] is an intellectual who should always be on the list of performers and thinkers in Brazil, yet little known. The silence of black authorship is systemic and organizes our literary system,” commented author Fernanda Miranda, researcher and author of “Silêncios Escritos: Estudos de Romances de Autoras Negras Brasileiras (18592006)
Maria Firmina dos Reis, recreated by João Gabriel dos Santos Araújo in a competition organized by Flup.
Image: reproduction
wrote more books
Maria Firmina didn’t stop there, no. The author published another book called “Gupeva” in 1861. This time the theme was indigenous. And in the following years he also published poems, short stories and other texts in several newspapers of Maranhão. All his poems were compiled into a single book entitled “Cantos à BeiraMar”, published in 1871.
Another curiosity: Flip’s tables are named after verses from Maria Firmina’s poems such as “Pátrios Lares”, “A Festa das Irmãs Perigosas” and “O Que Leave For Ahead”.
The legacy of Maria Firmina dos Reis is that of a tenacious vigilance towards human values, able to place education and imagination at the center of contemporary debate, but also the education of imagination.
Text by Flip’s curators
pioneer again
If we previously talked about how Maria Firmina dos Reis was a pioneer in literature, now we need to talk about how she was a pioneer in other areas of her life as well. In Maranhão she was not only the first woman admitted to a public competition, but also took first place.
Education for black men and women
In 1880 Maria Firmina founded a mixed school in Maranhão, ie boys and girls could study together in one class at the writers’ school, which was extremely rare at the time.
At that time most of the illiterate people in Brazil were black, not least because the enslaved had no right to study. But for Maria Firmina, this was a reality that needed to change, and her school allowed black people to attend classes.
In 2017, after 15 editions, writer Lima Barreto became the first black man to be honored by the Paraty International Literary Festival
Image: reproduction
About flip
This is the second jointly curated edition. The curators are Fernanda Bastos, Founder of the independent black publisher Figura de Linguagem, Milena Britto, Professor at UFBA, and Pedro Meira Monteiro Brazil, Professor at Princeton University.
With the theme of the edition, the party that traditionally takes place in July will be “See the Invisible”, this time due to the Covid19 pandemic it will take place between November 23rd and 27th, 2022.