Falatório/Chatter

Reviews / Votes

Stella do Patrocínio is a force to be reckoned with. Through her falatório / chatter, she liberates herself from the stigma of exclusion, offering a transformative interpretation of Brazil. From within the thick walls of a former sugar plantation turned mental asylum, her poetry chronicles how historical marginalization bred psychiatric violence in twentieth-century Brazil, straddling both dictatorial and democratic regimes. Those who, like her, entered confinement from the lower rungs of Brazilian society, endured a compounded erasure from historical and literary canon. Stella, however, breaks the mould by claiming authority over her own body and artistic expression. In this fascinating collection of all known materials produced by her at the Colônia Juliano Moreira, Iracema Dulley and Marlon Miguel create a new and sympathetic record of Stella's embodied poetic practice. Offered for the first time in Portuguese and English translation, the book presents Stella alongside short commentaries from those who knew or studied her. Ultimately, even if mediated by transcription, Stella's voice continues to urge us to listen in for social justice. In Falatório, readers will find both wisdom and sorrow paving the way for Black intellectual history in Brazil. - Isadora Moura Mota, Assistant Professor of History, Princeton University