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A review by clairewords
Her Mother's Mother's Mother and Her Daughters by Maria José Silveira
5.0
Just brilliant.
What a perfect way to navigate through 500 years of history of a country, without ever getting bogged down in the detail, to follow the lives of daughters, whose patterns are affected if not dictated by the context of the era within which they've lived, from the daughter of a native tribeswoman, who leaves with a Portuguese shiphand, to the many generations living on the sugarcane plantations, to the daughters of wealthy business owners living off the profits of those ancestors, from the bitter to the sweet, the uncaring to the revolutionary, five centuries of women.
Each chapter follows one young woman and though some of their lives are short-lived, they at least give birth to one daughter, even if some don't live to raise them.
Their stories are grouped into five parts:
A Shortlived Romance - Inaia (1500-1514) and her daughter Tebereté (1514-1548)
Desolate Wilderness -six daughter descendants, the slave years (1531 -1693)
Improbable Splendour - five daughters, the commercial trading years, accumulating wealth (1683 - 1822)
Vicious Modernity - four daughters, revenge, jealousy, naivety, the elite upper classes (1816 - 1906)
A Promising Sign - three daughters, working class, equality, human rights, exile, freedom (1926 - present)
There are so many stories, it is difficult to retain them all and remember them, and for this it's necessary to slow-read this book to really take in the breadth of storytelling, which implicitly tells the greater story of a country's evolution, growth, pain and development. But what better way than to inhabit the lives of one family and follow them over the course of time, recalling the fates of each character and the essence of the life they lived, was enabled or disabled by the time they lived through.
I absolutely loved it, I read this because I seek out works by women in translation to read in August for #WITMonth and finding a book like this is such a joy, for it gives so much in its reading, great storytelling, a potted history of Brazil, a unique multiple women's perspective and an introduction to an award winning author, the writer of ten novels and this her first translated into English!
Likely to be one of my favourite reads of 2019. A real gem.
What a perfect way to navigate through 500 years of history of a country, without ever getting bogged down in the detail, to follow the lives of daughters, whose patterns are affected if not dictated by the context of the era within which they've lived, from the daughter of a native tribeswoman, who leaves with a Portuguese shiphand, to the many generations living on the sugarcane plantations, to the daughters of wealthy business owners living off the profits of those ancestors, from the bitter to the sweet, the uncaring to the revolutionary, five centuries of women.
Each chapter follows one young woman and though some of their lives are short-lived, they at least give birth to one daughter, even if some don't live to raise them.
Their stories are grouped into five parts:
A Shortlived Romance - Inaia (1500-1514) and her daughter Tebereté (1514-1548)
Desolate Wilderness -six daughter descendants, the slave years (1531 -1693)
Improbable Splendour - five daughters, the commercial trading years, accumulating wealth (1683 - 1822)
Vicious Modernity - four daughters, revenge, jealousy, naivety, the elite upper classes (1816 - 1906)
A Promising Sign - three daughters, working class, equality, human rights, exile, freedom (1926 - present)
There are so many stories, it is difficult to retain them all and remember them, and for this it's necessary to slow-read this book to really take in the breadth of storytelling, which implicitly tells the greater story of a country's evolution, growth, pain and development. But what better way than to inhabit the lives of one family and follow them over the course of time, recalling the fates of each character and the essence of the life they lived, was enabled or disabled by the time they lived through.
I absolutely loved it, I read this because I seek out works by women in translation to read in August for #WITMonth and finding a book like this is such a joy, for it gives so much in its reading, great storytelling, a potted history of Brazil, a unique multiple women's perspective and an introduction to an award winning author, the writer of ten novels and this her first translated into English!
Likely to be one of my favourite reads of 2019. A real gem.