Manifesto

I am the daughter of a teacher, and this explains a lot.

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My childhood was steeped in Dostoevsky and Tolstoy, Adélia Prado and Cecília Meireles, Victor Hugo and Exupéry, Flaubert and Molière, Hilda Hilst and Lygia Fagundes Telles, Casimiro de Abreu and Gilberto Freyre, Manuel Bandeira and Saramago, Machado de Assis and Carlos Drummond (...)

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I was obsessed with exegesis; eschatology bored me.

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I listened to Bach and Chopin, Tim Maia and Jorge Ben Jor, Vinicius de Moraes and Tom Jobim, Elis Regina and Rita Lee, Milton Nascimento and Gal Costa, Frank Sinatra and Ella Fitzgerald, Nat King Cole and Louis Armstrong, Astrud Gilberto and Djavan, Noel Rosa and Nelson Gonçalves (...)

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I lived in the library, liked French cinema, and cooked polpettone with my grandmother.

 

I thought of Brazil as a new Rome, criticized sterile landscaping, and had gelato after school.

 

I wrote letters to my best neighborhood friends just like Fernando Sabino did with Clarice Lispector when he was in New York and she was in Bern.

 

My father ordered me to study Spanish and calligraphy; my mother taught me English and typing.

 

I took etiquette classes and read Neruda during breaks. I was fascinated by Cacilda Becker.

 

I dreamed of being Carlota Joaquina and had a grudge against Marie Antoinette.

 

In my childhood, I had the foundation for my destiny.

 

Mafar Language School is the home of high culture because I grew up in such an environment, and this school is my manifesto to the world.