July 13, 2025
‘Um Defeito de Cor’ author joins 128-year-old literary institution long led by white men.
Despite Brazil’s status as one of the countries with the largest Black populations in the world, its literary academy has remained largely white, and without a Black woman member of that body. However, this changed on July 10, when Ana Maria Gonçalves was named the Brazilian Academy of Letters’ newest member.
According to The Guardian, the 54-year-old Gonçalves’ election is being celebrated widely in Brazil as a sign of progress, and she holds a prominent space as one of Brazil’s most celebrated contemporary authors.
In a striking endorsement, Brazilian President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva wrote in a celebratory post that Conçalves’ most famous book, “Um defeito de cor (A Color Defect)” was his “companion” during his 580 day stay in prison and pointed out his own advocacy for the book. “I always make a point of recommending it to everyone,” da Silva said.
“A Color Defect,” which has yet to be translated into English, is a 900-page historical novel set in North America. Gonçalves calls the novel “the history of Brazil told from the point of view of a Black woman,” and pointed out in her own comments that the diversification of Brazil’s national literary academy is sorely lacking.
“I’m the first Black woman, but I can’t be the only one. I can’t carry the weight of representing an entire population that continues to be marginalized and that is itself incredibly diverse,” she told Brazilian newspaper Folha de S Paulo, which named her 2006 book as the greatest work of Brazilian literature so far in the 21st Century.
Though the first president of Brazil’s national literary academy was a Black man, Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, who is also considered the greatest writer in Brazilian history, the academy, which is still largely thought of as the House of Machado de Assis, has lacked Black people in it since his presidency.
This has consistently been a point of contention for many in a country where more than half the population is composed of people of African descent. Notably, Conçalves has been critical of the form and function of racism in Brazilian society, explored in North American media through a pair of op-eds published by The Intercept in 2017.
In one, she described a Brazilian academia that engaged in the erasure of a Black woman, Virgínia Leone Bicudo, who pioneered the field of psychoanalysis in Brazil.
In the second, Gonçalves explored a social dynamic in which white women adopt styles traditionally associated with Black women, such as head wraps, while deflecting criticism by leaning on perceptions of innocence. In her writing, the head wrap, commonly worn within the African diaspora, served as a metaphor for the broader commercialization of Black culture.
The issues addressed in her two op-eds—including critiques of racism and white supremacist attitudes—are part of what makes her appointment to the Brazilian Academy of Letters notable to many in Brazil. Poet and translator Stephane Borges told The Guardian she hopes Conçalves’ appointment will help create more opportunities for Black women to participate in Brazil’s literary landscape.
“When it’s us telling our own stories, we invite those who look like us to come closer to literature,” Borges said.
Conçalves seems to agree and told The Guardian that she plans to use what influence she has to create change inside of the national academy.
“The academy does need more women, more Black people, Indigenous people, and people from other parts of Brazil,” Gonçalves said. “And I hope that now, from the inside, I can help make that happen.”
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