Portuguese Language, Literature and Culture

The Falling Sky is a remarkable first-person account of the life story and cosmo-ecological thought of Davi Kopenawa, shaman and spokesman for the Yanomami of the Brazilian Amazon. Representing a people whose very existence is in jeopardy, Davi Kopenawa paints an unforgettable picture of Yanomami culture, past and present, in the heart of the rainforest--a world where ancient indigenous knowledge and shamanic traditions cope with the global geopolitics of an insatiable natural resources extraction industry. In richly evocative language, Kopenawa recounts his initiation and experience as a shaman, as well as his first encounters with outsiders: government officials, missionaries, road workers, cattle ranchers, and gold prospectors. He vividly describes the ensuing cultural repression, environmental devastation, and deaths resulting from epidemics and violence. To counter these threats, Davi Kopenawa became a global ambassador for his endangered people. The Falling Sky follows him from his native village in the Northern Amazon to Brazilian cities and finally on transatlantic flights bound for European and American capitals. These travels constitute a shamanic critique of Western industrial society, whose endless material greed, mass violence, and ecological blindness contrast sharply with Yanomami cultural values. Bruce Albert, a close friend since the 1970s, superbly captures Kopenawa's intense, poetic voice. This collaborative work provides a unique reading experience that is at the same time a coming-of-age story, a historical account, and a shamanic philosophy, but most of all an impassioned plea to respect native rights and preserve the Amazon rainforest.

Amazonia is an extraordinary book of Brazilian folktales that combines the authentic voice of Daniel Munduruku, a noted indigenous author who grew up in the Amazon rainforest, with the imagined Amazon of Nikolai Popov, one of Russia's major artists and its foremost children's book illustrator. Many years ago, Nikolai Popov, Russia's leading children's book illustrator, illustrated an extensive, academic collection of Brazilian folktales. The sources for his illustrations were the stories themselves and his own richly imagined Amazonia. Today the book is out of print and only a few copies survive -- a fate shared by many great books from the golden age of Russian children's books. Groundwood in collaboration with a Brazilian publisher, Edicões SM Brasil, commissioned Daniel Munduruku, a noted indigenous Brazilian author, to select those stories he felt were most representative of the peoples of the Amazon and to retell them in his own voice. Mermaids, jaguars, snakes, flying men, witches -- extraordinary creatures from the world's most important wild jungle live on in these tales. The stories are fascinating, and sometimes startling, as protagonists are killed off or transformed into animals or rise up precipitously into the heavens. But they offer a panorama of experience -- conflict and death, love and seduction, greed and gluttony, hunting and fishing, cooking and caring for plants -- and describe the origins of the natural world. Munduruku's storytelling and Popov's imagination bring us the tales of the people of the Amazon in all their magic wonder. An introduction describes the importance of myths, how the stories have survived and their relevance today. A glossary provides more information about animals and plants that may be unfamiliar to North American readers.

'The Amazon' features eight essays by Euclides da Cunha, about his trip through the Amazonin in 1905, written to describe the Brazilian hinterlands to the urban citizens.

Published in 1924 and widely acknowledged as a major work of twentieth-century Latin American literature, José Eustasio Rivera's The Vortex follows the harrowing adventures of the young poet Arturo Cova and his lover Alicia as they flee Bogotá and head into the wild and woolly backcountry of Colombia. After being separated from Alicia, Arturo leaves the high plains for the jungle, where he witnesses firsthand the horrid conditions of those forced or tricked into tapping rubber trees. A story populated by con men, rubber barons, and the unrelenting landscape, The Vortex is both a denunciation of the sensational human-rights abuses that took place during the Amazonian rubber boom and one of the most famous renderings of the natural environment in Latin American literary history.

A magical retelling of the myth of Eldorado, the Enchanted City of the Amazon, by one of Brazil's most acclaimed writers

Can forests think? Do dogs dream? In this astonishing book, Eduardo Kohn challenges the very foundations of anthropology, calling into question our central assumptions about what it means to be human--and thus distinct from all other life forms. Based on four years of fieldwork among the Runa of Ecuador's Upper Amazon, Eduardo Kohn draws on his rich ethnography to explore how Amazonians interact with the many creatures that inhabit one of the world's most complex ecosystems. Whether or not we recognize it, our anthropological tools hinge on those capacities that make us distinctly human. However, when we turn our ethnographic attention to how we relate to other kinds of beings, these tools (which have the effect of divorcing us from the rest of the world) break down. How Forests Think seizes on this breakdown as an opportunity. Avoiding reductionistic solutions, and without losing sight of how our lives and those of others are caught up in the moral webs we humans spin, this book skillfully fashions new kinds of conceptual tools from the strange and unexpected properties of the living world itself. In this groundbreaking work, Kohn takes anthropology in a new and exciting direction-one that offers a more capacious way to think about the world we share with other kinds of beings.

A delightful, witty tale of friendship and adventure from prize-winning novelist José Saramago   In 1551, King João III of Portugal gave Archduke Maximilian an unusual wedding present: an elephant named Solomon. In José Saramago's remarkable and imaginative retelling, Solomon and his keeper, Subhro, begin in dismal conditions, forgotten in a corner of the palace grounds. When it occurs to the king and queen that an elephant would be an appropriate wedding gift, everyone rushes to get them ready: Subhro is given two new suits of clothes and Solomon a long overdue scrub. Accompanied by the Archduke, his new wife, and the royal guard, these unlikely heroes traverse a continent riven by the Reformation and civil wars, witnessed along the way by scholars, historians, and wide-eyed ordinary people as they make their way through the storied cities of northern Italy; they brave the Alps and the terrifying Isarco and Brenner Passes; across the Mediterranean Sea and up the Inn River; and at last, toward their grand entry into the imperial city.