Flora Thomson-DeVeaux
É escritora, tradutora, brasilianista e diretora de pesquisa na Rádio Novelo
histórias publicadas
Small talk
One thing that continues to startle me (and when I say startle, I mean cause me to delicately raise an eyebrow) is the Brazilian ease of conversation. That’s not really the best way of putting it – it’s the Brazilian propensity for small talk, period. In the U.S., interactions with strangers are premeditated and only used sparingly, as necessary. But here, the activation energy for a conversation is vastly lower
Quando um microfilme se torna repulsivo
A week or two ago, I made it back to the Biblioteca Nacional for the first time in over a month. The reason for the delay was the perfect combination of my research lethargy and the fact that the library employees, bless their souls, went on an extraordinarily prolonged strike (which appeared to go unnoticed by nearly everyone except the workers themselves and a handful of very frustrated researchers). Ah, but all good things (excuses for not having made more JP progress) must come to an end, and so did the strike. So one Friday morning I dragged myself onto the Metro, rolled up my sleeves, and started threading in the microfilm. 1928, ready or not, here I come.
Happy thanksgiving, tigrinho
“But you’re not going home for Thanksgiving?”
I shook my head a little confusedly. Thanksgiving is an important family event, sure, but it won’t be the end of the world if I miss out on a stressful turkey-gorging session with my loved ones. (Last year found me hacking through what turned out to be the wrong side of a turkey with a pair of gardening shears in a desperate attempt to butterfly it, so I think I’ll take a pass on repeating that.) Suddenly I was being beheld as though I’d announced my intention to disown my baby sisters. How, my interrogators demanded, was I going to miss the most important American holiday of them all?
The true meaning of children’s day
How does someone who is not, has never been, and will never be a Brazilian child celebrate o Dia das Crianças?
This was the question as I faced down the prospect of a day without PUC classes, when all the museums and archives where I do research would be closed. I have to admit, I was a little lost. Not to mention the fact that I found the Dia das Crianças a somewhat ridiculous idea – we have Mother’s Day and Father’s Day in the States, but somehow haven’t thought to pass it on to the kids.
Passing
I had an interesting conversation with a Brazilian friend yesterday about his experience as an exchange student in Atlanta. He said that since he wasn’t out in the sun so much, he got white enough to pass for “American.” What do you mean? As it turns out, for my friend, passing for “American” is passing for white. I pointed out that whites aren’t the only Americans; plus, there’s a difference between being able to belong to the majority and being able to belong to a nation.
![Circunda-te de [livros], ama, bebe, e cala. O mais é nada](https://piaui.folha.uol.com.br/wp-content/uploads/2010/11/AH1294003689x9487.jpg)
Circunda-te de [livros], ama, bebe, e cala. O mais é nada
The other day I got an email that, to borrow a favorite phrase of Manuel Antônio de Almeida, made me pular de contente. A series of talks on Fernando Pessoa this month in the Real Gabinete Português de Leitura, starting on October 3rd! Who has two thumbs, no class on Mondays, and errands to run in Centro? This kid. (The one failing of the written word: you can't see when I'm pointing at myself. You'll just have to take my word for it.) This Monday found me practically skipping over to Rua Luis de Camões, only to be comically halted in my tracks by the sight of the vast Uruguaiana book fair. At least 5 blocks of book stands, all piled high with dusty and dirt-cheap books. PROMOÇÃO, screamed the handmade signs, and I came running.
Searching for Carmen
A concrete building, too small to be a UFO but too big to be a public bathroom, in a dusty, abandoned playground between two highways.
Unfortunately, I was in the right place. I’d finally found the Carmen Miranda Museum.
The first time I tried to make it there, in June, a guy tried to mug me. The second time, a few weeks ago, I lost the museum. I don’t know how else to explain it. I saw it on the bus when I was heading up to Centro and plotted out exactly how to get to it by walking down the Aterro do Flamengo. But somehow I arrived at Botafogo without running into it, and by that time I was too sweaty and late for other commitments to try turning around.
Uma flor para Chico
"On this day in 1952, Brazil came to a stop."
That was my fun fact of the day on Tuesday. I don't know what sort of reaction I was expecting to get out of people, but when I told my rowing instructor as he was helping me into the boat, his face suddenly got very grave. I felt the need to offer up supplementary information. "On September 27th, 1952, Francisco Alves died in a car accident on the way back from São Paulo." He was staring at me with a very serious expression. I was about to offer more details when he cut in. I thought he was going to reveal that he was a long-lost relative of Chico Alves', or that he was Chico's biggest fan.
Delicadeza no Engenhão
It couldn’t have been otherwise.
The 21 years in which Botafogo went without winning a single title are one kind of tragedy; one could argue that Sunday’s game was one in the much purer sense, if on a massively smaller scale. First act ends up, second act takes a gut-punching nosedive. Unity of action, unity of place, and unity of time. Aeschylus would have been proud.
What brought it on, of course, was our hubris.
From Ataraxia to Zarelho
I’m in love with my newest acquisition, a sort of proto-thesaurus which I found at a sebo in Centro – a Dictionary of Synonyms in the Portuguese Language. The book is highly eccentric in a number of ways: first of all, it’s divided into I. VERBS and II. WORDS (NOT VERBS), apparently because Portuguese doesn’t have a way to distinguish between nouns and adjectives? (It definitely does, for the record.)
