Eunice Paiva is a woman of many lives. Married to congressman Rubens Paiva, she was by his side when he was impeached and exiled in 1964, after the coup that installed a military dictatorship in Brazil. A housewife and mother of five children, she had to raise them alone when, in 1971, her husband was arrested, tortured and murdered by agents of the dictatorship. For decades the military insisted on a distorted version of events, in which Rubens Paiva was killed as he fled with guerrillas resisting the regime. It took Eunice nearly thirty years to finally receive answers, even if incomplete, about what actually happened to Rubens Paiva.During her quest for the truth, amongst her pain, Eunice reinvented herself. She went back to school, became a lawyer and a global leader in the defence of indigenous rights. Meanwhile, she never stopped searching for the truth. Never cried in front of the cameras either.In this masterful book, Marcelo Rubens Paiva creates an emotional portrait of Eunice, his mother, and for the first time traces the dramatic story of what happened - and what may have happened - to his father, who "died by decree, thanks to the Law of the Disappeared, twenty-five years after he died from torture". By talking about Eunice and her last fight, against Alzheimer's, he also talks about memory, childhood and family, as well as one of the most terrible moments in recent Brazilian history.
Rezensionen / Stimmen
"The chief focus of Marcelo Rubens Paiva's book is essentially his mother's quiet heroism - first as she single-handedly shoulders the responsibility of keeping the family together and protected, concealing her grief when the inevitable is confirmed, and subsequently when she earns a law degree at 48 and becomes active in a number of causes. That includes pushing for full acknowledgment from authorities of disappeared people like Rubens after democracy is returned to the country." -The Hollywood Reporter
"Walter Salles has based his film on a memoir, also called I'm Still Here, written by Marcelo Rubens Paiva, that pieces together his mother's memories of her husband's disappearance (...). Salles has a purpose here. He is clearly not simply recording what happened; this is a film of political advocacy, warning against forgetting what tyranny did to the country and the stains it left behind. As much as it is a celebration, it is his defence of Brazil." -Deadline
"I'm Still Here: a book that is a tribute to the rescue of memory." -O Estado de S. Paulo
"The book, which crosses the stories of Rubens Paiva, Eunice and Joaquim, is also a way for Marcelo to recount the experience of an upper middle class family in Sao Paulo transformed by a coup d'etat like that of 1964. He looks to the past to see different heroes than those elected by the Left and the Right forces. For the writer, his parents are not only domestic heroes but also of a civil resistance that repudiated the 21 years of military rule." -UOL Noticias
" In dark times, when many are being seduced by the promises of a repressive regime, this is a must-read." -Escotilha
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Praise for Marcelo Rubens Paiva
The book that inspired the Walter Salles-directed film starring Golden Globe winner Fernanda Torres and nominated for 3 categories at the 2025 Oscars, including Best Picture.
"...And perhaps most crucially, having the film end with Eunice's now even more extended clan gathered once again in an airy garden for a smiling family photograph, turns it into a cautionary tale, addressed to those forces in Brazil and beyond, who would seek a return to repression and rule by fear. The national spirit you seek to subdue will outlast you. The people you try to oppress will live to see you reviled and rejected by history, while those who resist will have songs and stories written about them. They will inspire music and art in celebration of their lives and will have movies as heartsore and beautiful as I'm Still Here made in their honor."Variety review for the I'm Still Here film adaptation
Sprache
Verlagsort
Produkt-Hinweis
Illustrationen
Maße
Höhe: 198 mm
Breite: 129 mm
ISBN-13
978-1-917260-30-5 (9781917260305)
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Schweitzer Klassifikation
Marcelo Rubens Paiva is an award-winning writer, screenwriter and playwright. He studied Radio & TV Communication (USP; 1982-87), Drama (Centro de Pesquisas Teatrais do Sesc-SP; 1989-90), and a Masters in Literature (Unicamp; 1991-94) and is a Fellow of the Knight Fellowship Program (Stanford University, CA; 1995-96). Since 1983, he's been writing columns for newspapers and magazines such as Veja ,Folha de S. Paulo , Vogue RG , O Estado de Sao Paulo , Miami Herald , San Francisco Chronicle , and The New York Times.
Alison Entrekin is an award-winning Australian literary translator from the Portuguese. She has translated many of Brazil's most beloved and iconic literary works, including Clarice Lispector's 1943 debut novel Near to the Wild Heart , the favela classic City of God by Paulo Lins and Jose Mauro de Vasconcelos's My Sweet Orange Tree .
Daniel Hahn is a writer, editor and actual human translator. His work has won him the Independent Foreign Fiction Prize, the International Dublin Literary Award and been shortlisted for the International Booker Prize, among many others. His translations for Charco Press include novels from Brazil, Argentina, Chile, Colombia and Peru. He is the author of Catching Fire: A Translation Diary .
