If you know a little about Brazilian culture, you should know that, around here, Carnaval is serious business. The festivities go beyond a street party, and in some states, it manifests itself through competition between “samba schools” – congregations formed in communities that work for music and the love of Carnaval. The parades are carried out with professionalism, on an avenue with an audience, feathers, and lots of samba.
And on February 13th, Portela, a traditional school in Rio de Janeiro, chose a Brazilian book as inspiration for its “samba plot”, as the theme songs that accompany the parades are called. “Um defeito de cor” (A color defect., in direct translation), an epic of more than 900 pages written by Ana Maria Gonçalves, featured Carnaval artists André Rodrigues and Antônio Gonzaga, and appeared on Amazon’s bestseller list in Brazil the day after the parade was broadcast.
According to publisher Record, which publishes the book in the country, sales of the title rose 10 times in the post-parade week compared to the previous week, given that the title had already been widely distributed pre-Carnaval. On Wednesday (14), the work had already sold out of stock on Estante Virtual, a robust book marketplace in Brazil. Sales, according to the website, grew 3,300% in just two days.
The book has a value that goes beyond a simple story: it tells the life of an 80-year-old former African slave, who travels from Africa to Brazil in search of her missing slave son, making reference to the revolt of Muslim slaves from the Malê nation in the city of Salvador, Bahia. The movement had as its objective the liberation of slaves, the end of Catholicism – a religion imposed on slaves who arrived in Brazil – among others.
Ana Maria’s research for the book lasted five years and resulted in the discovery of the story of the legendary figure, Luísa Mahin, mother of the poet and journalist Luís Gama. According to the author, Luís was the son of an enslaved woman and a Portuguese man. At the age of seven, his mother began to be persecuted for participating in the slave rebellion and disappeared, leaving him with his father. At age 10, he was sold into slavery by his father to pay off a gambling debt.
“There is no historical document that proves the existence of Luísa, so I started with a letter and two poems by Luiz Gama talking about his mother: a Muslim, black and enslaved woman who was leader of the Malê Rebellion. I found the figure of a woman leader of a Muslim rebellion, in Bahia, in 1835, very interesting”, said the actress in an interview with the Brazilian Publishers website in 2018.
The adaptation for samba brought a new perspective to the work: it simulates a response from Luís Gama to his mother, recognizing her legacy. The novel, in turn, is narrated from the perspective of Kehinde (or Luisa Mahin).
The book followed Brazil’s mobilization around racial issues, and since 2017 it has been rediscovered. In 2022, a special edition and exhibition about the work at the Rio Art Museum (MAR) brought even more traction to “Um defeito de cor”. The work has also been used in several courses at national and international universities, such as “Brazilian Literature – Slavery and Black Diaspora” at Tulane University (New Orleans) and “Contemporary Brazilian Literature – Race and Rebellion in the historical novel Um Defeito de Cor” at Stanford University (Palo Alto), and won the Casa de Las Americas Award in the Brazilian literature category, in 2007.
Ana Maria Gonçalves
The author Ana Maria Gonçalves was born in Ibiá, in the state of Minas Gerais, in 1970. She began writing short stories and poems as a teenager. In addition to “Um defeito de cor” (2006), the author also independently published “Ao lado e à margem do que sentes por mim” (Aside and apart from what you feel for me) (2002).