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Conceição Evaristo wins Juca Pato Intellectual Trophy of the Year
Jamil ChadUOL columnist
09/16/2023 08h57
For the first time, the Juca Pato Intellectual Trophy of the Year, granted by the Brazilian Writers Union, goes to a black woman. In its 2023 edition, the award goes to Conceição Evaristo.
The list of finalists included Martinho da Vila, Maria Villani, Marilene Felinto and Pedro Bandeira. The award is one of the most traditional in the country and was created in 1962 at the initiative of writer Marcos Rey.
With democracy and resistance as a basis, the award had already been given in recent years to personalities like Frei Betto, Lygia Fagundes Telles, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, Antonio Candido, Dalmo Dallari, Milton Hatoum, Ignácio de Loyola Brandão, Aílton Krenak and the former presidents of the Republic Juscelino Kubitschek and Fernando Henrique Cardoso, among others.
The Minister of Culture, Margareth Menezes, will be invited to participate in the tribute, in early November during the Itabira International Literary Festival ( MG ), Flitabira, organized by Afonso Borges. Whoever delivers the Prize is always the winner of the previous year, in this case, Father Júlio Lancellotti.
Conceição Evaristo was chosen from a vote by UBE members. The prize, according to the entity, is awarded to the personality who has published a book in Brazil, in the previous year, and stood out, for the work as a whole, in any area of knowledge, valuing and representing democratic ideals.
The winner
The author from Minas Gerais, Conceição Evaristo published in 2022 the book "Canção para ninar menino grande" (Lullabies for big boys) ( Ed. Pallas ). In the book, the winner of Juca Pato narrates the love relationships of black women with the character Fio Jasmim and the network of affections resulting from these relationships.
An essential voice of the national black movement and the search for a multiple identity, she was chosen in 2019 as the Literary Personality of the Year by the Jabuti Award.
Conceição introduced the concept of "escrevivência". In other words, the writing that is born from everyday life, immersed in personal realities and in the history of a struggle. It addresses, above all, the inequality that marks the country, making a powerful portrait of millions of Brazilians.
Conceição Evaristo debuted in literature in 1990, with her short stories and poems in the series Cadernos Negros (Black Notebooks). Her first novel, Ponciá Vicêncio, from 2003, exposes racial discrimination. Five years later, the work would be launched in the United States. In 2006, she also published Becos da Memória (Alleys of Memory)and she has dozens of publications in Brazil and abroad.
Humble origin
Maria da Conceição Evaristo de Brito was born in Belo Horizonte, in 1946. She worked as a domestic servant in the capital of Minas Gerais, lived in the Pindura Saia favela and only completed her teachers preparatory course at the age of 25.
In the 70s, she started to live in Rio de Janeiro, where she worked as a public school teacher. She did her master's degree in Brazilian Literature at PUC-RJ and holds a PhD in Comparative Literature from Universidade Federal Fluminense.
Her account of her childhood gives an idea of what she faced in order to study and survive:
"Like Carolina Maria de Jesus, on the streets of the city of São Paulo, we knew in Belo Horizonte, not only the smell and taste of garbage, but also, the pleasure of the income that the leftovers of the rich could offer us ", she wrote.
"Behind basic things for everyday life, the surpluses of some, almost always built on the misery of others, humbly returned to our hands. Remains, "she said.
Her relationship with words and writing is also unique:
"I was not born surrounded by books, from time / space I learned from a child to collect words. Our house empty of material goods was inhabited by words. Mom told stories , my aunt told stories, my old uncle told stories neighbors and friends told stories. Everything was narrated, everything was a reason for prose-poetry, I always say. However, I still assure you that the world of reading, that of the written word, was also presented to me within my family, which, although made up of mostly semi-literate people, all were seduced by reading and writing. We always had old books, magazines, newspapers at home. I remember our reading evenings. My mother or aunt leafing through the printed material with us and translating the messages"
Testimony at the 1st Colloquium of Writers of Mines, May 2009
In one of the excerpts of her work she reports:
"The eye of the sun hit the clothes lying on the clothesline and Mom smiled happily. Droplets of water sprinkling my girl life swayed in the wind. Small tears from the sheets. Blue stones, pieces of indigo, lint of lonely clouds fallen from the sky were found around the basins and tubs of washing clothes. Everything caused me a bigger commotion. Poetry visited me and I didn't even know...
Today, the whole of Brazil knows."
About the Juca Pato Trophy
The trophy is the replica of the character created by journalist Lélis Vieira and immortalized by illustrator and cartoonist Benedito Carneiro Bastos Barreto, known by the pseudonym of Belmonte ( 1896-1947 ).
About UBE
UBE, a civil society founded in 1958, struggles to defend freedom of expression, copyright, the book's production chain and to democratize access to information. Ricardo Ramos Filho is its current president.
Since its foundation, resulting from the merger between the Sociedade Paulista de Escritores and the Brazilian Writers Association, UBE has promoted cultural, social and literary activities.
In recent years, UBE has manifested itself by maintaining and strengthening the republican principles that should guide the country. Promotes virtual and face-to-face meetings with writers of relevant importance for the dissemination of literature and the defense of civil rights, as well as using electronic and printed means to give writers, book professionals and Brazilian society a voice.
https://noticias.uol.com.br/colunas...ce-trofeu-juca-pato-de-intelectual-do-ano.htm (slightly edited).
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