Flip starts today with the 1st tribute to a black writer and women featured in the program

Flip (International Literary Festival of Paraty) starts this Wednesday (23) after two years of online events due to the Covid-19 pandemic and this year, for the first time in 20 years of event, it pays homage to a black author: Maria Firmino dos Reis, responsible for the novel that inaugurated abolitionist literature in Brazil.

But the party also has a good list of women authors as highlights in the programming, among them, the French writer Annie Ernaux, winner of the 2022 Nobel Prize in Literature, the Pernambuco poet Cida Pedrosa, the Argentine Camila Sosa Villada, a trans writer who tells the story of stories of her universe in fable form and writer and professor of comparative literature at Columbia University, Saidiya Hartman is an important exponent of contemporary black thought and develops research in the fields of history of slavery and African-American literature.

In 2020, the event was criticized for initially choosing the American Elizabeth Bishop as the honoree due to her praiseworthy record of the 1964 military coup. A year later, it opted for a theme and not a person: the Atlantic Forest.

Already this year, when celebrating Maria Firmino dos Reis, it shows a commitment to connecting people from the most varied origins and trajectories.

Milena Britto, member of the Flip 2022 trio of curators and professor of Languages ​​at the Federal University of Bahia, says that after two decades of Flip, the objective was to bring together past and present, showing the breadth and diversity of the country.

“The choice of Maria Firmino is a kind of self-criticism, in the sense that the literary field is very attached to certain models. Brazil is reviewing itself, rethinking itself and we bring up this issue from an aesthetic point of view”, explained the curator.

Born around 1822, a teacher in Maranhão, Maria Firmino managed to continue with her work even in the face of a scenario dominated by white men. She died without any prestige, but her name was rescued by researchers from the 1970s onwards.

During the event, on Saturday (26), the Nobel Prize in Literature will be at the Diamante Rubro table with Brazilian Veronica Stigger, writer, art critic and university professor. They will debate the role of art and the strength of literature.

“What is this female writing today? Both are anomalous because they are not within an aesthetic profile. Ernaux faced French criticism and then gained strength, as a person who observes everyday life, revisits everyday life, politicizing the genre. Verônia, on the other hand, brings up the issue of humor, it is almost a literature of the absurd”, points out Milena.

The plurality of the fair also appears in the artist chosen as the highlight, who is a photographer. Swiss Claudia Andujar needed to flee Nazi persecution, emigrated to the United States and, in 1955, arrived in Brazil, where she developed her work as an artist. Among her best-known works are the images of Yanomami indigenous people.

“She doesn’t frame the other as an object of her gaze, but uses photography techniques that have a certain narrative, very close to literary. The human being appears as autonomous, as an exchange”, said the curator of the event.

To plan ahead and take advantage of Flip’s extensive list of events, check out the schedule here🇧🇷