This novel tells the story of three generations of an Afro-Brazilian family living on a plantation called Água Negra, located in the hinterland of Bahia, one of Brazil’s 26 states, located in its Northeast. Some of the black workers on the plantation refer to themselves as Quilombolas, a name for escaped slaves in colonial Brazil. Though they are free at the time the novel is set, their living conditions have changed very little. They are not paid for working the land of the Portuguese owner, and they are not allowed to build brick houses with tilted roofs. Rather, houses must be constructed by using only mud to prevent the workers from establishing a degree of permanence on the land and perhaps even claim the land they settle on as their own. For their livelihood, these black workers depend on the gardens that are attached to their huts. Thus, they are subsistence farmers who use most of their time to work on the owner’s plantation for free. In fact, many, especially of the older generation, even feel grateful to the owner that he has given them a piece of land on his plantation that they can use to sustain their livelihoods.

The book is divided into three parts with different narrators. Bibiana begins her story when she is seven years old. Her sister, Belonísia, is about one year younger. Fatefully, they discover an old suitcase under the bed of Grandma Donana. One day, when Donana is out, the sisters cannot suppress their curiosity and look through the contents of the suitcase. Among other things, they find a knife with a very shiny blade. For some reason, Bibiana takes the blade into her mouth and hurts her tongue. When Belonísia does the same, she cuts off most of her tongue. She is rushed to the hospital in town, but the doctors cannot reattach it. Thereby, Belonísia becomes mute for the rest of her life. Bibiana becomes her interpreter. It is only much later in the book that readers learn that Donana had stolen the knife from rich plantation owners and subsequently used it to kill the man with whom she had lived after she came home early one day to find him raping one of her daughters, Carmelita. That had been going on for one year, but the girl did not dare tell her mother.

            The sisters’ father, Zeca Chapéu Grande, and their mother, Salustiana Nicolau, were both born of different other plantations. Zeca is a widely respected practitioner as House of Jarê, a set of syncretic religious and cultural traditions of Afro-Brazilians in a certain area of Bahia. He performs regular rituals at his house, which includes people getting possessed by spirits and dancing in trance to the sound of drums. Besides, he is an important traditional healer, both of physical and mental ailments. Mainly, however, he is a very skilled worker in the fields of the plantation. Salustiana, or Salu for short, followed her mother by becoming a midwife.

            At some point in her narrative, Bebiana gets involved with her cousin, Severo. He has progressive ideas that he expresses with confidence. Severo persuades her to leave home in search of a better future elsewhere. In fact, she also aspires to go beyond working on the plantation for free. Reaching a decision is hard for her: “Watching my father and my mother grow old, working all day, every day, without rest, without any guarantee of comfort in their old age, that didn’t seem fair … But I couldn’t match Severo’s excitement about leaving home. I felt dejected and confused” (p. 77).

            At one of the Jarê rituals, an unfamiliar encantada (spirit, supernatural deity) occurred. It possessed Dona Miúda and revealed itself as Santa Rita the Fisherwoman. Bibiana was grabbed by the possessed woman. She talked to her without the others being able to hear it. “…the exact phrase that persists in my memory, after the many blows I’ve suffered, is this: ‘From your movement shall come both your victory and your defeat’” (p. 79). Bibiana has almost decided against leaving with Severo, when she observed how the plantation manager, Sutério, humiliated her widely respected father. That changed her mind. Shortly afterwards, she is gone without even leaving a note for her parents.

            With Bibiana gone, the story is now narrated by Belonísia. She tries to attend the newly established school, but it is hard because she cannot speak and is older than the other kids. More importantly, she is not drawn to learning, although she can already write and read better than her mother (her father is illiterate). She is drawn to working on the land. Zeca, her father, becomes her teacher about all things natural. One day, a new farmhand turns up at the plantation, Tobias, who is quite a bit older than Belonísia. He develops an interest in her, and eventually, he takes her to his house. She is shocked by its condition and of the interior. It is a pigsty. Belonísia describes her first sex with man as follows:

He laid me down on the bed and began kissing my neck, then lifted my dress. What happened next didn’t justify my fears. It was like cooking or sweeping the floor, just another chore, albeit an unfamiliar one. I was a woman living with a man now, so I understood this was something I’d have to do. As he entered and exited my body with a back-and-forth motion that brought farm animals to mind … I turned my head toward the window. (p. 115)

She never gets pregnant, and he gets more and more annoyed and abusive. As luck would have it, one day, he fell from his house and died, making Belonísia a lifelong widow.

            After many years, Bibiana and Severo returned to the plantation. She had finished secondary school equivalency and studied teaching, earning a teacher certificate. He put his effort into trying to organize the farmworkers so that they could better pursue their interests. Zeca died of old age. Shortly afterwards, the owners sold the plantation. Anxiety grew about what this meant for the workers living on the land. Would the new owner just try to get rid of them, although they had lived on this land for generations, even having their own cemetery? Meanwhile, Severo had prepared a list of people who had signed up to establish a union. Severo and Bibiana already sat on their motorcycle to drive to town to have the notary register it. Bibiana got off the motorcycle to fetch another document from the house. Belonísia heard some popping sounds and ran out at the same time as Babiana: “Severo was lying on the ground. The dry earth at his feet had cracked open, and in that rift there flowed a river of blood” (p. 208). He had ben hit by eight bullets, and hardly anyone doubted that the new owner had hired gunmen to murder Severo to get rid of the single most important person opposing him.

            The third part of the book starts with the spirit Santa Rita the Fisherwoman, who had been with the black workers since the time their ancestors were enslaved in Africa, speaking about the time that she had accompanied her human bodies. Some time after burying her husband, Babiana called a community meeting, observed by the supposed mastermind of the murder. She says,

Our people made their way to this plantation long ago. Each of us knows the story; it’s been repeated many times, a thousand times. Many of us, most of us, in fact, were born on this land. And what did our people find here? Nothing but hard work. Everything you see around you exists because of your hard work. … [We have been] Working just to be allowed to live on this land. The same slavery as before, but dressed up as freedom. What freedom is that? We can’t build brick houses, we can’t plant the crops we need. They take everything they can get from our labor. We work from Sunday to Sunday, without seeing a penny in return. … But we won’t stop fighting for our liberty, for our rights. The seed that Severo planted will not die. One of us is gone; he was my companion, the father of my children. But there are many more of us on this plantation. They plucked one fruit from the branch, but the tree remains. With roots too deep to be wrenched from the soil. (pp. 229-231)

One day, the new owner’s wife came running down the road from her house, screaming. He had been found lying in a pit. “Salomão’s body had been found nearly decapitated …” (p. 265). This followed a growing movement of disobedience from the workers, starting to build brick houses. Bibiana’s son was about to leave for the city to sit for the university entrance exam. Upon his departure, Belonísia remained standing at the door looking down the road the car had taken. “Bibiana was about to start grading students’ work, but she got up from the table and stood behind her. She wrapped her arms around her sister’s waist and nestled her face against her neck. Belonísia held her sister’s hands in hers. They both closed their eyes and shared the moment, surrendering to that gesture and experiencing something that might be called forgiveness” (p. 272).

            The book ends with the following paragraph.

The jaguar fell into the pit but was holding on, clawing at the edge. The trap, hidden deep in the woods and covered by a mat woven of buriti fibers and dried cattails, filled it with terror. Some people swear that overseers used this kind of trap long ago to capture runaway slaves. The jaguar hit the bottom of the pit, its fangs driven into the ground. It wiped the dirt from its mouth. No, it was foolish to think the pit could hold the prey. But as it made to escape, a blade slashed its neck with a rage the beast had never before confronted.

   On this land, it’s the strongest who survive. (p. 276).

Readers may be justified in assuming that the old encantada Santa Rita the Fisherwoman still wielded some power, after all.

MHN

Nonthaburi, Thailand

26 December 2023