Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior — the lost voices

Deep in the backlands of Brazil’s north-east, Bibiana and Belonísia, young daughters of indentured farmworkers, make an astonishing discovery: in a suitcase hidden beneath their grandmother’s bed is an old, mysterious knife. Entranced by the glint of its blade, Belonísia presses it against her tongue. Impatient to handle the knife herself, Bibiana pulls it away, accidentally slicing off her sister’s tongue.

This shocking moment of trespass and violence sets the tone for Itamar Vieira Junior’s debut novel, Crooked Plow, published to critical acclaim in Brazil in 2018, and now available to English-language readers in Johnny Lorenz’s skilful translation.

The incident with the knife brings the girls closer than ever, with Bibiana taking on her sister’s voice: “That’s how I became a part of Belonísia, just as she was becoming a part of me . . . we felt like Siamese twins, sharing the same tongue to make the words that revealed what we needed to become.”

Their mutual dependence is deepened by the harsh rural landscape, “that hostile land of perennial sun and occasional rain, that abusive land where people were dying constantly, denied all succour, where we lived like cattle, working and getting nothing in return”. But when desires awaken, their loyalties are tested.

It is the timeless need to emigrate in search of better opportunities that pulls them apart. A pregnant Bibiana leaves the family homestead and is soon training to be a teacher, growingly aware of — and determined to speak out against — the deep-rooted injustices of rural servitude. Belonísia, who stays behind, becomes immersed in the world of saints and spirits in which their father is a respected medium and healer.

The unrelenting realities of life in the north-eastern sertão, or backlands, are enhanced by an abundance of supernatural presences. After both Bibiana and Belonísia have told their versions of the story, the novel’s final section is given over to Santa Rita the fisherwoman, a time-straddling, shape-shifting spirit summoned by their father during his healing ceremonies.

Belonísia’s literal inability to make herself heard is a scathing commentary on the silencing of those living at the margins

Although set in contemporary Brazil, Bibiana and Belonísia’s tale might easily have been plucked from a more remote past. The novel is a compelling reflection on the powerlessness of rural workers — living, even today, in conditions similar to their ancestors’ enslavement. In exposing the exploitation of tenant farmers, it also offers a pointed analysis of the underlying issues of race and racism. Belonísia’s literal inability to make herself heard is a scathing commentary on the silencing of those living at the margins. This is a story about women seeking to find their voices in a world dominated largely by brutish fathers, brothers, and husbands.

Since the publication of Crooked Plow, Vieira Junior has been hailed as an heir to a tradition of Brazilian storytellers from the north-east including Jorge Amado, Graciliano Ramos, José Lins do Rego and Joaõ Guimarães Rosa. A geographer and ethnographer by training, Vieira Júnior conducted academic research into the plight of Afro-descendant communities in Brazil’s north-east. Yet the prose is far from academic. It is rooted, instead, in the voices and languages of the sertão, in the names of the animals and plants, in the oral storytelling traditions of ancient communities, in the richness of the spirit world. That is one of the novel’s greatest strengths. An impressive first novel by an important literary voice.

Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior, translated by Johnny Lorenz, Verso £10.99/$19.95, 288 pages

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