Conceicao Evaristo. Poncia Vicencio.

Ferreira, Isabel Cristina Rodrigues

Conceicao Evaristo. Poncia Vicencio. Paloma Martinez-Cruz, tr. Austin, Texas. Host. 2007. vi + 132 pages. $20 ($12 paper). ISBN 978-0-924047-33-6 (34-3 paper)

PONCIA VICENCIO is the debut novel by Conceicao Evaristo. She has published most of her work since 1990, including short stories and poetry, in various anthologies of black writers and in issues of Cadernos Negros. This novel describes the protagonist's (Vicencio's) paths, dreams, and losses, from childhood to adulthood. Poncia's memory takes us, readers, to her universe, revealing to us and to herself emotions related to her present and past, and her family. The novel opens with Poncia, as an adult, remembering some ancient African beliefs from her childhood. She was raised in a system of belief called Candomble, a combined system of Catholicism and African tradition. In search of a better life, Poncia leaves her village, family, and roots for the city. This spatial change does not represent any gender, class, or racial changes, but her revelation only comes when she returns to her village. She then realizes that she replaced her rural and poor life for a violent relationship, hard-working conditions, and an awareness of the myth of racial democracy: "Slave to despair, the absence of hope, the impossibility of launching new battles, organizing new communities, imagining a better life."

Another aspect presented by Evaristo is Poncia's family bond. She was specially connected to her grandfather Vicencio, sharing some physical resemblance with him. Their land carries the family history, and it is Poncia and her brother's duty to carry on their history: "She had finally been made the vessel, the heir to a history of all their suffering, and while this suffering lived on in their memory, those that embodied it would not be able to forge a new destiny, not even by force." Back to their land, they will, together with their own people, create a different history of their community based and structured on a communal force that moves people together and forward.

A native of Brazil, Conceicao Evaristo, born Maria da Conceicao Evaristo de Brito, is a writer and professor of Brazilian literature at the Catholic University in Rio de Janeiro (PUC-RJ). Since childhood, her respect for the oral tradition, which she learned from her mother and her aunt, was transmitted to Evaristo in their fondness for telling and listening to stories. Besides family heritage, she evokes myths, gods, and historical figures present in African and Afro-Brazilian tradition. Her works deal with the social factors that impact the family, including the power that women exert in their role as mothers and the consequences of society's failure to provide adequately for its youth. Women are not only portrayed as mothers in Conceicao Evaristo's works; she also writes about their bodies and intimacy. All experiences and events can be transformed Into narratives.

Isabel Cristina Rodrigues Ferreira

University of Oklahoma