07/01/2019
In this vibrant collection of profiles, journalist Brum (One Two) explores the lives of people from communities across Brazil with empathy, transporting the reader to the forest of Amazonia, the favelas of São Paulo, illegal mining camps, and beyond. Living in the pages are midwives who travel by canoe, mothers of sons lost to poverty and the drug trade, men digging for gold with their bare hands—all people living unnoticed on the periphery of Brazilian society. Brum’s measured handling unites her subjects through a compassionate, even celebratory, tone. Typical is her treatment of the title story’s subject, an elderly trash collector—of “broken fans, cracked vases, abandoned toys”—and hoarder in the city of Porto Alegre, whom she describes as believing in a “world where neither things nor people are disposable” and serving as a “lone combatant against an army of 1.3 million people who toss out the remnants of their lives every day.” Throughout, Brum shows how her subjects, people excluded from wealth and privilege, resist in a myriad of ways the society determined to marginalize them. Thanks to her sensitive and adventurous reporting, this book is one full of people and stories not soon forgotten. Anja Saile, Anja Saile Literary Agency (Oct.)
In poetic, immersive essays, Brum assembles a chorus of ‘many Brazilian tongues’: forest-dwelling midwives, elderly-care-home residents, a terminal cancer patient, far-flung Amazon populations.”—The New Yorker
“In confirming the humanity of those whom we might easily overlook, Brum’s writing is a call to greater awareness of the lives around us.”—Ploughshares
“While Brum does not shy away from the violence and poverty that sometimes overshadow Brazil's reputation, her talent is in profiling and humanizing people who are too often treated as an undifferentiated mass. In the process, she honors their pursuit of joy and justice—their everyday insurrections.”—Shelf Awareness
“Ordinary lives rendered extraordinary by a master journalist who captures all their perplexity and quiet rebellion.”—Kirkus Reviews, starred review
“Brum shows how her subjects, people excluded from wealth and privilege, resist in a myriad of ways the society determined to marginalize them. Thanks to her sensitive and adventurous reporting, [The Collector of Leftover Souls is] full of people and stories not soon forgotten.”—Publishers Weekly
“With lyricism and heart, renowned journalist Eliane Brum draws us into the lives of everyday Brazilians and their stories, until we see not one Brazil but many.”—Frances de Pontes Peebles
“Eliane Brum asks us on every page to contemplate the privileged gaze . . . and to consider how it might be transformed into art and, ultimately, action.”—Francisco Cantú
“Eliane Brum has it all and is a unique voice that understands the Brazil of today.”—Juan Pablo Villalobos
“[Eliane Brum’s] vision of human beings isn’t tainted by buzzwords or what she or they ought to feel. Her sympathies are broad, nuanced, and humane.”—Tom Sleigh
“This immersive tale of a journey through many-voiced, many-forested Brazil is achingly humane, beautifully written, and essential to our understanding of why the Earth is our greatest wealth.”—Kapka Kassabova
10/25/2019
Prize-winning Brazilian journalist, novelist, and documentarian Brum (One Two) here presents shorter articles and long-form features written from 1999 through 2015 that elevate the lives of some of Brazil's most marginalized communities. The collection begins with pieces revolving around the theme of birth, following midwives whose calling takes them throughout the Amazon to deliver babies, and concludes with a moving story about a woman named Ailce, whose entire life was devoted to the care of others and upon retirement is tragically diagnosed with terminal cancer. In between, readers glimpse the everyday of "ordinary" Brazilians. There's the couple whose home and livelihood are destroyed by the Bel Monte hydroelectric dam, and narratives of the joy and heartbreak of mothers, daughters, and sons living in favelas (slums). For Brum, who carefully explains in her introduction that "a news story means stripping off the clothes of ourselves to don the Other," every report is a chance to demonstrate compassion and love for the people who manage to invent a meaningful life from near impossible beginnings. VERDICT Beautifully translated from Portuguese by Whitty, these accounts make up an unforgettable compilation documenting the lives of those largely underrepresented in literature. While the stories are specifically Brazilian, the insights they reveal are universal.—Stefanie Hollmichel, Univ. of St. Thomas Law Lib., Minneapolis
★ 2019-08-19
A selection of journalistic pieces from 1999 to 2007 by an accomplished Brazilian journalist, novelist, and documentary filmmaker spotlights "a country that exists only in the plural…the Brazils."
A rigorous investigative journalist who attempts to inhabit the lives of her subjects while suppressing her own "biases, judgments, [and] worldviews," El País columnist Brum (One Two, 2014, etc.) adheres to a method of listening carefully and letting her subjects unravel the story themselves. In the first piece, "Forest of Midwives," the author chronicles the vivid tale of midwives in the riverlands of far northern Brazil, whose ancient skills at "baby-catching" are passed from generation to generation. Although the women don't get paid or have a lot to eat, children are their riches: "Out here in these backwaters of death," says one elder midwife, "either we fill the world with children or we vanish." Brum writes eloquently of people mired in the doomed cycle of poverty, most of whom can't get a leg up because there is no support. In "Burial of the Poor," the author writes about Antonio, "feller of trees," who walked to the hospital to retrieve his stillborn baby, just one of the numberless poor who "begin to be buried in life." In the most heart-wrenching longer piece, "The Noise," Brum tells the story of T., a longtime worker in an asbestos plant in São Paulo who was dying of mesothelioma (the "noise" was the hideous sound of his gasping for breath). Poisoned by the plant owners who knew the health danger and tried to get him to sign away indemnity (he refused), he told Blum, "I am made of asbestos." Among many other poignant stories, the author describes the teeming underbelly of the favelas in Brasilândia, the desperately poor gold prospectors in Eldorado do Juma, a defiant elderly community in Rio de Janeiro, and a threatened clan of Indigenous people deep in the heart of the Amazon.
Ordinary lives rendered extraordinary by a master journalist who captures all their perplexity and quiet rebellion.
