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Read Your Way Through Salvador
By Itamar Vieira Junior and translated by Johnny Lorenz. July 19, 2023.
I was born in Salvador, in the Brazilian state of Bahia, and lived in the general vicinity until I
reached the age of 15. But it was when I left that I really came to know my city. How was I
able to discover more about my birthplace while traveling far from home? It might sound
rather clichéd but, I assure you, literature made this possible: It took me on a journey, long
and profound, back home, enveloping me in words and imagination.
To understand the formation of our unique society and, consequently, the cityscape of
Salvador, one should read, before anything else, “The Story of Rufino: Slavery, Freedom
and Islam in the Black Atlantic,” by João José Reis, Flávio dos Santos Gomes and Marcus
J.M. de Carvalho. Rufino was an alufá, or Muslim spiritual leader, born in the Oyo empire in
present-day Nigeria and enslaved during his adolescence. “The Story of Rufino” is an epic
tale, encapsulating the life of one man in search of freedom as well as the history of the
development of Salvador itself, a place inextricably linked with the diaspora across the Black
Atlantic. Another book for which I have deep affection is “The City of Women,” by the
American anthropologist Ruth Landes. It offers an intriguing perspective, focusing on
matriarchal power in candomblé, an Afro-Brazilian sacred practice, and revealing how the
social organization of its spiritual communities reverberates across the city.
If you want to feel the intensity of life on the streets of Salvador, these two books, both by
Amado, are indispensable: “Captains of the Sands” and “Dona Flor and Her Two
Husbands.” The first is a coming-of-age story in which we follow a group of children and
adolescents living on the streets and on the beaches around the Bay of All Saints. Written
more than 80 years ago, the book was banned and even burned in the public square during
the dictatorship of Getúlio Vargas in the first half of the 20th century. As a portrait of
Salvador, it is still relevant and reveals our deep inequalities. “Dona Flor and her Two
Husbands” is one of Amado’s most popular novels, translated into more than 30 languages
and adapted many times for theater, cinema, and television. The book is a kind of manifesto
for a woman’s liberation. Dona Flor possesses great culinary talent, and oppressed by a
patriarchal society, finds herself divided between two men, one being her deceased
husband. While the novel captures the daily life of the city in the 1940s, it is also a wonderful
guide to the cuisine of Salvador, with its African and Portuguese influences.
I invite readers to travel into the interior of Bahia, many hours by car from Salvador to the
region known as the Sertão, whose name translates loosely to “backwoods.” Two books can
also transport you there, and they are sides of the same story: “Backlands: The Canudos
Campaign,” by Euclides da Cunha, and “The War of the End of the World,” by Mario
Vargas Llosa.
“Backlands” is one of the most important works in the history of Brazilian literature. It is a
journalistic telling that introduces us not only to the brutal War of Canudos, but also to the
intriguing landscape of the Sertão, a place so full of contradictions. In his writing of the
conflict, da Cunha tells the story of the genesis of the tough sertanejo: a mythic,
cowboyesque figure of the drought-stricken, lawless interior. “The War of the End of the
World” is an essential epic that amplifies the narrative of “Backlands,” bringing a more imaginative, creative aspect to the story of Antônio Conselheiro, the spiritual leader of a
rebellion, and of the multitude that followed him to their deaths.
[Fonte: “Read Your Way Through Salvador”. In: The New York Times, 19/07/2023,<http://www.nytimes.com/2023/07/19/books/salvador-bahia-brazil-books.html> . Adaptado. Data
de acesso: 01/09/2023.]