In his acceptance speech for the 2021 Nobel Prize for Literature, Abdulrazak Gurnah dedicated the award to refugees - people seeking shelter, whether humanitarian, economic or political. Originally from Zanzibar (now Tanzania), Gurnah observes that refugees never arrive in other countries empty-handed, with nothing to offer, despite the numerous problems they face. He, Nadine Gordimer, Nobel laureate in 1991, and Tayeb Salih are the first authors contemplated by the 'Literature between Borders' Project (Africa), launched on March 21 at the Instagram of the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair.
"The theme of refuge and travel is very present in authors from Sub-Saharan Africa. Gurnah, who arrived in the United Kingdom as a refugee, dedicates a large part of his work to the issue of internal migration to the African continent, from the coast to the interior, as well as from the southern hemisphere to the northern hemisphere", explains the project's curator, professor Elena Brugioni.
In 2017, in response to student demand, a new area was created at the Institute of Language Studies (IEL), and the teacher became responsible for the disciplines of African literature and post-colonial studies. She researches authors from various origins, including Portuguese-speaking African countries, on which there are already consolidated studies in Brazil. "I work along a comparative line, with literature in different languages, which can be read in the original or in translation. At the time of Gurnah's Nobel Prize, I was approached by many newspapers and magazines, as her name appears in my research projects. I realized that we were dealing with an illustrious unknown, someone not yet published in Brazil. But apparently Companhia das Letras hurried to acquire the publishing rights to his work and we will soon have one of his books accessible to the Brazilian public."
According to Brugioni, the idea of promoting lesser-known African works marked by themes as important and current as that of refuge and travel emerged at that moment. “Let’s start with by the sea (By the sea, 2001), by Gurnah, a little to celebrate the Nobel, and we will continue with authors from different trajectories, languages and countries, producing content to be shared on Instagram.”
The idea is to produce information that is immediately accessible, in order to spark public interest, especially among young people and students. “It would be interesting to establish greater involvement between the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair and Unicamp students, but also with the general public, in Brazil and abroad. Hence the choice of Instagram, a social media capable of reaching diverse audiences, with great ease."
The Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair as a refuge
Unicamp maintains an agreement with the UN Agency for Refugees, which resulted in the implementation of the Sérgio Vieira de Mello Chair, chaired by professor Ana Carolina Maciel. "We have actions to welcome students in refuge conditions, permanence policies and extension activities. This includes the project to promote refugee authors, whose works are still little known in Brazil. With the theme of refuge as a guiding principle, such actions allow us to expose the drama of forced displacement to a wider audience”, says Maciel.
“In the first decades of this century we faced a humanitarian drama. According to the latest survey by UNHCR (United Nations High Commissioner for Refugees), there were 82,4 million displaced people in the world; With the current humanitarian crises in Afghanistan and Ukraine, this number has unfortunately increased dramatically."
For Maciel, reception policies for this population are necessary, but also outreach, as refugees, in most cases, do not have access to the word. "The authors covered in the project help to understand the meaning of being a refugee through the lens of autobiographical literature, with all the subjectivity that this implies", he said.
First authors of the project "Literature between Borders"
Nadine Gordimer, Nobel Prize winner in 1991, wrote more than 30 books, mostly novels, short stories and chronicles, about the social deterioration that affected South Africa during the apartheid regime. One of her standout texts is the novel The hitch (The pickup), from 2001, published in Brazil by Companhia das Letras. She passed away in Johannesburg in July 2014.
Tayeb Salih explores the theme of African colonization and its repercussions on characters who wander between two worlds, that of refugees and that of local citizens, whether in England or Sudan. Time to migrate north (Mawsim al-Hijra ila ash-Shamal), from 1966 (published by Editora Planeta), was considered by the Arab Academy of Damascus to be the most important Arabic novel of the XNUMXth century.
To learn more about the project “Literature between borders”, access the CSVM Instagram
