Book that discusses racism in Brazil has a 1,500% increase in sales

Book that discusses racism in Brazil has a 1,500% increase in sales

The book “Confinement Trilogy”, which brings together three works, “Namibia, no!”, “Immediate embarkation” and “The battlefield”, by Aldri Annunciation, and that inspired the movie “Provisional Measure”, had a sales increase of approximately 1,500% in the last 12 months.

But the feature film released in April of this year and which marked the debut of Lázaro Ramos directing was not the only reason for the increased interest in the texts of this Bahian writer and screenwriter.

“Currently, there is a great demand in the literature for racial issues, in particular those that debate racism in Brazil,” he tells the newspaper. CNN , Sergio Kon editor of Perspectiva, the company responsible for publishing the book.

“This issue gained enormous visibility after the murder of George Floyd in the United States, and the movement ‘Black Lives Matter’ (Black lives matter). But, of course, the demand intensified even more with the debut of ‘Provisional Measure’”, he says.

The text of “Namibia, no!” was responsible for inspiring the film, which took half a million spectators to theaters. The story revolves around two characters, André and Antônio, who spend the day locked in their apartment to escape a provisional measure that aims to offer historical reparation in Brazil, giving them the right to go to an African region and leave the country. .

Another main character of the feature film is Capitu, played by the actress Tais Araújo . She is a black doctor who tries to survive in the neighborhoods of Rio de Janeiro, while running from the police to avoid being caught by the provisional measure and taken to Africa. Capitu finds refuge in the ‘afro bunker’, where blacks who do not agree with the reparation policy meet to resist the state.

Representation

the president of Locomotive Institute , Renato Meirelles also points out that the high demand for the work comes from a growing demand from the black population for themes that portray their own history.

“Blacks had their references in literature and cinema minorized. So, it is a latent demand to have representations from another point of view”, she says.

According to research by the Contemporary Literature Studies Group at the University of Brasília, between 1990 and 2014, “the five main occupations of black characters in the books were bandits, domestic servants, slaves, sex workers and housewives”.

The author Aldri Anunciação believes that the thematic imbroglio of the book is what generated interest in the work. “The plot revolves around black people in need of protection and confinement.”

As a child, he says he had the need to “survive” on racial issues, and that he lived through stories similar to those of the characters in his works.

Anunciação is 45 years old and believes that this is not an aspect that is in the past.

According to data from the Secretary of Justice and Citizenship of the state of São Paulo, more reports of crimes of racism and racial slur have been registered between January and April 2022 than in the whole of 2021.

In the first four months of this year, there were 174 cases in the cities of São Paulo, against 155 during the entire previous year.

For Anunciação, the importance of the work is that it “may have been one of the first to treat racism in a dystopian way”.

The book was also a play directed by Lázaro Ramos, released in 2011 and which had more than 1 million people in the audience during the eight years that it was on display.

The writer also comments that the audience of both the book and the film and the play were interested in themes “significant to make society more human”.

blackness in literature

A survey by the contemporary literature study group at the University of Brasília brought a racial and gender radiography of the Brazilian publishing market.

After analyzing 258 novels published by three major publishers between 1990 and 2004, the study revealed that about 94% of published authors were white.

The survey also showed that in 56% of the works there is no non-white character, and that just two books alone accounted for about 20% of the black characters.

Source: CNN Brasil