Rachel de Queiroz was a Brazilian author, translator, and journalist. She was a member of a group of Northeastern writers.
Background
Rachel was born on 17 November 1910 in Fortaleza, capital of the northeastern state of Ceará. The daughter of well-off intellectuals, the young de Queiroz was always surrounded by books. Her family descended from the old Brazilian state of Ceara, was exceedingly literate. De Queiroz’s father read Eca de Queiroz and French authors, and her mother was partial to Russian writers such as Fyodor Dostoyevsky and Maxim Gorky. When de Queiroz’s mother died, she left a library of approximately five thousand books.
Education
Brazilian native Rachel de Queiroz attended a Catholic girls’ school.
Career
In 1927, Rachel began working as a journalist in her home town of Fortaleza, Brazil. Three years later, de Queiroz’ first book, O quinze (“1915”), was published to critical acclaim. De Queiroz enjoyed critical accolades throughout her literary career, but the first moments of her literary journey were far from encouraging. She began writing as a small child but wrote in secret because she was afraid of her siblings and her mother.
Rachel's career as a novelist began when she published O quinze (1930) at age twenty. Although she is also a dramatist, chronicler, translator, and writer of children's literature, O quinze remains her most noted work. It placed her in the mainstream of the Northeastern regional novelists who documented the human, social, and geographical complexity of the Brazilian sertão.
Towards the end of her career, she co-authored two texts with her sister Maria Luiza Tantos anos (1996) a book of memories and Não me Deixes - Suas histórias e sua cozinha (2000). Throughout her journalistic career, Queiroz continued to write crônicas (short prose pieces), published in several collections.
Politics
Rachel's limited political activity included a diplomatic mission to the United Nations on the Commission for Human Rights in 1966.
Views
Much of Queiroz's fiction addresses social problems associated with banditry and religious fanaticism in the sertâo.
Quotations:
“I thought they would make fun of me. I did stories that had daggers, lightning and I don’t know what else. I wrote them and ripped them up.”
Membership
Academia Brasileira de Letras.
Personality
Rachel's special talent is illustrated in her portrayals of feminine characters who question their traditional roles in society and the family, but these sociological aspects form only a backdrop to situations and individual characters. Her literature incorporates the simplicity of style and language.