Rachel de Queiroz

Rachel de Queiroz (born November 17, 1910, Fortaleza, Brazil—died November 4, 2003, Rio de Janeiro) was a Brazilian novelist and member of a group of Northeastern writers known for their modernist novels of social criticism, written in a colloquial style (see also Northeastern school).

De Queiroz was reared by intellectuals on a ranch in the semiarid backlands of Ceará state in northeastern Brazil, and the region—with its periodic droughts, bandits, backlands mystics, and forgotten men and women—looms large in her writing. Her creative abilities were recognized early, and she began working as a journalist for the regional newspaper O Ceará at age 16. Her first book, O quinze (1930; “The Fifteen” [meaning the year 1915]), was a freshly conceived genre novel dealing with families forced to abandon their homes in the drought of 1915; it shows special sympathy for the role of women in this semifeudal society. Although it has the hallmarks of a first novel, the book is also noteworthy for its attempt to reflect spoken rather than literary language, and it was hailed by sophisticated critics in Rio and São Paulo. A ham-handed attempt to meddle with the plot of her second novel, João Miguel (1932), ended her short-lived association with the Communist Party. Her third novel, Caminho de pedras (1937; “Rocky Road”), is the story of a woman rejecting her traditional role and embracing a new sense of independence. As três Marias (1939; The Three Marias), her first work to be written in the first person, follows the lives of three girlhood friends from their meeting in a convent school to adulthood and exposes both the inadequate educational system and the limited role allowed to women in Brazilian society.

De Queiroz moved to the Ilha do Governador in Guanabara Bay (near Rio). There she honed the crônica, a prose subgenre of short, often poetic prose pieces that vary in form and subject matter. Her crônicas were published weekly, and in 1948 she collected several of these in the book A donzela e a moura tórta (“The Damsel and the Cross-eyed [Female] Moor”). She was instrumental in establishing that form in Brazil. Her novel O galo de ouro (“The Golden Rooster”) was first published serially in 1950, but she was unhappy with it, and she completely reworked it for the book version of 1985. The first of her three plays, Lampião (1953), treats the actions of that legendary bandit and his lover, Maria Bonita, who abandons her husband and children to follow him. Most critics preferred her second play, A Beata Maria do Egito (1958; “Blessed Mary of Egypt”), which updates the legend of the martyr Saint Maria Egipciaça, setting the action in a small Brazilian backwater. Her third effort was Teatro (1995; “Theatre”).

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Much of de Queiroz’s later life was devoted largely to the writing of crônicas. She acquired a mass audience for her brief journalistic essays on subjects of general interest and published several later collections, including O Brasileiro perplexo (1963; “The Brazilian Problem”), O caçador de tatu (1967; “The Armadillo Hunter”), As menininhas e outras crônicas (1976; “The Girls and Other Stories”), and Mapinguari: crônicas (1989; “Mapinguari [A legendary horrifying beast of the rainforest]: Stories”). Among her later works of long fiction are Dôra, Doralina (1975; Eng. trans. Dôra, Doralina) and Memorial de Maria Moura (1992; “Maria Moura’s Memorial”; filmed as a miniseries for Brazilian television in 1994). In 1993 she was awarded the Camões Prize, the most prestigious and remunerative award given for Portuguese-language literature. In 1977 de Queiroz became the first woman to be elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. She was a member of the Federal Council of Culture from 1967 to 1985 and in 1966 was a delegate to the UN.