Rachel de Queiroz

Brazilian writer and descendant of the writer José de Alencar, Rachel de Queiroz was born on November 17, 1910, in Fortaleza, Ceará, and died on November 4, 2003, in Rio de Janeiro. She lived alternately in Rio de Janeiro and Ceará until 1917, when the family tried to settle permanently in Rio de Janeiro. In 1919, she returned to Quixadá, in the backlands. In 1921, she went to Rio de Janeiro as a boarder at the Immaculate Conception College. After finishing her studies four years later, she returned to the farm, where her mother began to guide her reading. In 1927, the family moved to a place near Fortaleza. There, Rachel de Queiroz collaborated with the newspaper Ceará, publishing the novel in serial form Stories of a Namein addition to poems and chronicles.
In 1930 he published The Fifteen, a work in which she debuted as a novelist and with which she became known. There she vigorously portrays the horrors of the great drought of 1915. In 1937 she moved to Rio de Janeiro, where she wrote many vivid chronicles that led her to be considered one of the greatest Brazilian writers. She published in installments, in the newspaper The Cruise, with whom she was a frequent collaborator, the novel The Golden Rooster (1950), which were followed Maria Barbara and The Solitary.
In the 1960s, Rachel Queiroz worked at the UN Human Rights Commission as a delegate for Brazil. She was a member of the Brazilian Federal Council of Culture from its founding in 1967 until its dissolution in 1989.
She was distinguished with several literary awards in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo, such as the Machado de Assis Prize in 1957 and the Brasília National Literature Prize (for her body of work) in 1980. She was the first woman writer to join the Brazilian Academy of Letters (1977) and received a doctorate. Honoris Causa She graduated from the Federal University of Ceará (1981) and the State University of Rio de Janeiro (2000). She was awarded the Camões Prize in 1993.
Rachel de Queiroz demonstrates in her works a strong connection to the places where she lives. In her novels, the presence of Ceará is noticeable, a state that forever marked her memory. In her chronicles... The Maiden and the Crooked Moor (1948), 100 Selected Chronicles (1958) and The Perplexed Brazilian (1964), this region alternates with Rio de Janeiro.
Social problems are frequently raised in the form of demands and linked to creations of the popular imagination. In the theater, the play Lamp (1953) is centered on the theme of droughts, which corresponds to its initial phase. The piece Blessed Mary of Egypt (1958) is an adaptation of the Northeastern Brazilian legend of Saint Mary of Egypt, pointing to a spiritualist phase with Catholic roots. His work Memorial of Maria Moura (1992) was the subject of a TV series produced by Globo (a Brazilian television network) in 1994, which was also shown in Portugal. He wrote an autobiography in 1998, titled So Many YearsIn addition to being a writer, she translated works by famous authors such as Dostoevsky, Tolstoy, and Flaubert.

Rachel de Queiroz. In Infopédia [Online]. Porto: Porto Editora, 2003-2011.