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Field Notes on Brazil's Everyday Insurrections
by Eliane Brum
Urgent investigative essays covering a wide range of humanity in Brazil, from the Amazon to the favelas.
Eliane Brum is a star journalist in Brazil, known for her polyphonic writing that gives voice to people often underrepresented in popular literature. Brum's reporting takes her into Brazil's most marginalized communities: she visits the Amazon to understand the practice of indigenous midwives, stays in São Paulo's favelas to witness the joy of a marriage and the tragedy of young men dying due to drugs and guns, and wades through the mud to capture the boom and bust of modern-day gold rushes. Brum is an enormously sensitive and perceptive interlocutor, and as she visits these places she provides intimate glimpses into both everyday and extraordinary lives: a poor father on the way to bury his son, a street performer who eats glass, a woman living out her final 115 days, and a hoarder rescuing the "leftover souls" of the city.
The Collector of Leftover Souls showcases the best of Brum's work from two books, combining short profiles with longer reported pieces. These vibrant missives range across current issues such as the human cost of exploiting natural resources, the Belo Monté Dam's eradication of a way of life for those on the banks of the Xingu River, and the contrast between urban centers and remote villages. Told in the vibrant and idiomatic language of the people Brum writes about, The Collector of Leftover Souls is a vital work of investigative journalism from an internationally acclaimed author.
"Ordinary lives rendered extraordinary by a master journalist who captures all their perplexity and quiet rebellion." - Kirkus Reviews (starred review)
"Brum shows how her subjects, people excluded from wealth and privilege, resist in a myriad of ways the society determined to marginalize them. Thanks to her sensitive and adventurous reporting, [The Collector of Leftover Souls is] full of people and stories not soon forgotten." - Publishers Weekly
"With lyricism and heart, renowned journalist Eliane Brum draws us into the lives of everyday Brazilians and their stories, until we see not one Brazil but many." - Frances de Pontes Peebles
"Eliane Brum asks us on every page to contemplate the privileged gaze...and to consider how it might be transformed into art and, ultimately, action." - Francisco Cantú
"Eliane Brum has it all and is a unique voice that understands the Brazil of today." - Juan Pablo Villalobos
"[Eliane Brum's] vision of human beings isn't tainted by buzzwords or what she or they ought to feel. Her sympathies are broad, nuanced, and humane." - Tom Sleigh
"This immersive tale of a journey through many-voiced, many-forested Brazil is achingly humane, beautifully written, and essential to our understanding of why the Earth is our greatest wealth." - Kapka Kassabova
This information about The Collector of Leftover Souls was first featured
in "The BookBrowse Review" - BookBrowse's membership magazine, and in our weekly "Publishing This Week" newsletter. Publication information is for the USA, and (unless stated otherwise) represents the first print edition. The reviews are necessarily limited to those that were available to us ahead of publication. If you are the publisher or author and feel that they do not properly reflect the range of media opinion now available, send us a message with the mainstream reviews that you would like to see added.
Any "Author Information" displayed below reflects the author's biography at the time this particular book was published.
Eliane Brum is a writer, journalist, and documentary filmmaker, and the author of five books of nonfiction and the novel One Two. She has won more than forty journalism prizes and honors, is a columnist for El País, and collaborates with the Guardian.
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