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Black authors shake up Brazil's literary scene

    Itamar Vieira Junior, whose day job working for the
Brazilian government on land reform took him deep into the
impoverished countryside, knew next to nothing about the
mainstream publishing industry when he put the final touches
on a novel he had been writing on and off for decades. On a
whim, in April 2018, he sent the manuscript for Torto Arado,
which means crooked plow, to a literary contest in Portugal,
wondering what the jury would make of the hardscrabble tale
of two sisters in a rural district in northeastern Brazil where the
legacy of slavery remains palpable.

    To his astonishment, Torto Arado won the 2018 LeYa
award, a major Portuguese-language literary prize focused
on discovering new voices. The recognition jump-started
Mr. Vieira's career, making him a leading voice among the
Black authors who have jolted Brazil's literary establishment
in recent years with imaginative and searing works that have
found commercial success and critical acclaim.

    Torto Arado was the best-selling book in Brazil in 2021,
with more than 300,000 copies sold to date. The previous
year, that distinction went to Djamila Ribeiro's A Little
Anti-Racist Handbook (Pequeno Manual Antirracista), a
succinct and plainly written dissection of systemic racism
in Brazil.

    Mr. Vieira, a geographer, and Ms. Ribeiro, who studied
philosophy, are part of a generation of Black Brazilians who
became the first in their families to get a college degree,
taking advantage of Federal Government programs. Mr. Vieira
managed to use his day job at Brazil's land reform agency,
where he has worked since 2006, to do field research. He
studied the politics and power dynamics that shape the
lives of rural workers, including some who toil in conditions
analogous to modern-day slavery. That experience, he said,
made the characters in his novel more layered and their
fictional hometown, Água Negra, which means black water,
feel authentic.

    The two authors are among the highest profile figures
of a literary boom that includes Black contemporary writers
and authors who are experiencing a revival. The clearest
example is Carolina Maria de Jesus, who died in 1977 and
whose memoir, Child of the Dark (Quarto de Despejo), is now
a literary sensation, as it was when it was published in 1960.
The book, a compilation of diary entries by Ms. Jesus, a single
mother of three, offers a raw account of daily life in a São
Paulo slum where dwellers picked through garbage for food
and slept in shacks patched together with slabs of cardboard.

(Ernesto Londofio. www.nytimes.com, 12.02.2022. Adaptado.)

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    Researchers in the US have developed a technological aid: a chest-mounted video camera — linked to a processing unit involving a computer-vision algorithm — and a pair of vibrating wristbands. When the system detects a hazard that the wearer is set to collide with, the wristband on the same side as the hazard vibrates. If the obstacle is straight ahead, both wristbands vibrate. The researchers said the device was not designed to replace canes or guide dogs but rather to provide additional benefits, including helping wearers to avoid hazards above ground level.

     Writing in the journal Jama Ophthalmology, the researchers reported that a study of 368 hours of walking video data from 31 blind or partially sighted participants indicates that the approach could be helpful.

    After a period of training, each participant used the system for about four weeks, in addition to their cane or guide dog. During this time the system switched unannounced between “active” mode — during which the wristbands vibrated when a hazard was detected — and “silent” mode, where they did not. The researchers then analysed the data to see whether the rate of contacts between the user’s body or cane and the objects identified by the system differed between the two scenarios.

    When they looked at a random sample of collision warnings for each participant, they found that such contacts were reduced by 37% when the system was in active mode, taking into account factors including participants’ level of visual acuity.

(Nicola Davis. www.theguardian.com, 22.07.2021. Adaptado.)

T E X T

Children set for more climate disasters than their grandparents, research shows

    People born today will suffer many
times more extreme heatwaves and
other climate disasters over their
lifetimes than their grandparents,
[05] research has shown. The study is the
first to assess the contrasting
experience of climate extremes by
different age groups and starkly
highlights the intergenerational
[10] injustice posed by the climate crisis.

    The analysis showed that a child
born in 2020 will endure an average of
30 extreme heatwaves in their lifetime,
even if countries fulfil their current
[15] pledges to cut future carbon emissions.
That is seven times more heatwaves
than someone born in 1960. Today’s
babies will also grow up to experience
twice as many droughts and wildfires
[20] and three times more river floods and
crop failures than someone who is 60
years old today.

    However, rapidly cutting global
emissions to keep global heating to
[25] 1.5C would almost halve the heatwaves
today’s children will experience, while
keeping under 2C would reduce the
number by a quarter.

   A vital task of the UN’s Cop26
[30] climate summit in Glasgow in November
is to deliver pledges of bigger emissions
cuts from the most polluting countries
and climate justice will be an important
element of the negotiations. Developing
[35] countries, and the youth strike
protesters who have taken to the
streets around the world, point out that
those who did least to cause the climate
crisis are suffering the most.

 [40]    “Our results highlight a severe
threat to the safety of young
generations and call for drastic emission
reductions to safeguard their future,”
said Prof Wim Thiery, at Vrije

[45] Universiteit Brussel in Belgium and who
led the research. He said people under
40 today were set to live
“unprecedented” lives, ie suffering
heatwaves, droughts, floods and crop
[50] failures that would have been virtually
impossible – 0.01% chance – without
global heating

    Dr Katja Frieler, at the Potsdam
Institute for Climate Impact Research in
[55] Germany and part of the study team,
said: “The good news is we can take
much of the climate burden from our
children’s shoulders if we limit warming
to 1.5C by phasing out fossil fuel use.
[60] This is a huge opportunity.”

    Leo Hickman, editor of Carbon
Brief, said: “These new findings
reinforce our 2019 analysis which
showed that today’s children will need
[65] to emit eight times less CO2 over the
course of their lifetime than their
grandparents, if global warming is to be
kept below 1.5C. Climate change is
already exacerbating many injustices,
[70] but the intergenerational injustice of
climate change is particularly stark.”

    The research, published in the
journal Science, combined extreme
event projections from sophisticated
[75] computer climate models, detailed
population and life expectancy data,
and global temperature trajectories
from the Intergovernmental Panel on
Climate Change.

  [80]   The scientists said the increases
in climate impacts calculated for today’s
young people were likely to be
underestimates, as multiple extremes
within a year had to be grouped
together and the greater intensity of
[85] events was not accounted for.

    There was significant regional
variation in the results. For example,
the 53 million children born in Europe
and central Asia between 2016 and
[90] 2020 will experience about four times
more extreme events in their lifetimes
under current emissions pledges, but
the 172 million children of the same age
in sub-Saharan Africa face 5.7 times
[95] more extreme events.

    “This highlights a disproportionate
climate change burden for young
generations in the global south,” the
researchers said.

 [100]   Dohyeon Kim, an activist from
South Korea who took part in the global
climate strike on Friday, said:
“Countries of the global north need to
push governments to put justice and
[105] equity at the heart of climate action,
both in terms of climate [aid] and
setting more ambitious pledges that

take into consideration historical
responsibilities.”

[110]   The analysis found that only those
aged under 40 years today will live to
see the consequences of the choices
made on emissions cuts. Those who are
older will have died before the impacts
[115] of those choices become apparent in the
world.

https://www.theguardian.com/environment/ 2021/sep/27/

    Redu, Belgium — Nearly 40 years ago, books saved this village.

    The community was shrinking fast. Farming jobs had disappeared and families were moving away from this pastoral patch of French-speaking Belgium. But in the mid-1980s, a band of booksellers moved into the empty barns and transformed the place into a literary lodestone. The village of about 400 became home to more than two dozen bookstores — more shops than cows, its boosters liked to say — and thousands of tourists thronged the winsome streets.

    Now, though, more than half the bookstores have closed. Some of the storekeepers died, others left when they could no longer make a living. Many who remain are in their 70s and aren’t sure what’ll happen after they’re gone.

    It’s not just the businesses at risk. It’s Redu’s identity.

Reis Thebault. This village was a book capital. What happens when people stop buying so many books? In: The Washington Post. Internet: www.washingtonpost.com (adapted).