Ana Maria Gomides: ‘Carta’
Ana Maria Gomides reading ‘Carta’
Querido leitor,
Tenho o privilégio de morar, trabalhar e existir em Narrm/Birraranga—cidade também conhecida como Melbourne—terra que pertence as pessoas Wurrundjeri e Boon Wurrung da Nação Kulin. Sou beneficiada com a dispossession desses Povos Indígenas e seus ancestrais. Entretanto, quero manifestar o meu respeito a eles e a todas as pessoas Aboriginal e Torres Strait Islander se deparando com meu trabalho.
Learning about what ‘westerns’ refer to as ‘magic realism’ in school marked the beginning of an almost obsessive desire to know about my família’s history. Here was a genre I could finally actually relate to. I could see the stories my tia and tios exchanged among themselves, the ones I’d eavesdrop on as a child in Brasil. I could relate to Allende and Márquez’s characters, and not just because I have about fifty relatives called either Antônio or Maria.
I finally realised the possibility of writing about us without having to abide by the rules of capital L Literature and its binary constrictions of what constitutes fiction and non-fiction. Because, you see, ‘magic realism’ to me is just realism. The agglomeration of diasporic beliefs and religions in Brasil, brought on by colonization—including the Atlantic Slave Trade and, later, migration—means that the ‘fantastical’ or ‘supernatural’ is just part of our everyday lives.
My tia Mariana is the matriarca da nossa família. Her mãe died fairly young, and my avô left his children soon after the fact. My own mãe was only almost eleven when this happened, which means that she seldom had answers to the battery of questions I posed back then. So, one day, she emailed her irmã, asking for information on my behalf.
My tia’s reponse came many months later, in the form of a handwritten letter—blue, ballpoint pen, on binder paper that she probably borrowed from one of her netas’ school supplies. It travelled all the way from Brasil to Nouvelle-Calédonie, where Mamãe was living at the time. The latter sat with the letter for a long while—processing the information within—before mailing it to me. It was years before I found the courage to read it.
This piece is based on the first part of this letter, a sort of preface to the stories Tia Mariana had to tell. I’ve always found it curiously and powerfully poetic. From her use of metaphors and analogies, as well as repetition, to the fact that it reads like a stream of consciousness, when my tia has no fucking clue—and probably couldn’t care less—what Dadaism or Surrealism is.
Tia Mariana spent her childhood and adolescence in poverty. She was only allowed a primary school education by my avô. Her written português isn’t what one would call ‘proper’. It’s very working-class, full of particular idioms and expressions that get lost in translation. Her use of punctuation is strange, eclectic, and sometimes just plain confusing. To me however, é a coisa mais linda do mundo. É um presente inestimável.
As you may have gathered from my use of Big Words in this introduction, I’ve been given the luxury of the education that Tia Mariana was forbidden from pursuing. My disregard for grammar and punctuation in what follows, is both honouring her, and telling the ‘educated’ folks who’d consider her writing less than ordinary—pra se irem fuder.
A few years ago, the matriarca not only granted me permission, but also asked me to write down her stories. Our stories. So I see this as a collaboration between us.
Minha tia é poeta por instinto. Acho que isso é de família, né?
Glossary
Glossary (opens in a new page).
Ana Maria Gomides is an Afro-Brasileira goddess, a chronically ill warrior princess, a queer icon, and a low key bruxa, so watch yourself. She was blessed by the ancestors with the perfect booty, but was once described as “dancing like a Brown girl who grew up with no friends." Moral of the story being, you can't have it all.