On Monday night, literature turned into samba during at the Rio de Janeiro Sambadrome, where a parade that put an African rhythm to a bestseller about slavery in Brazil.

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African warriors with feather shields and spears intermingled with floats to tell the story of the protagonist of the novel “A Defect of Color,” a woman named Kehinde captured in Africa.

From one of the floats emerged the face of a black woman with a white turban and a caravel on top, symbolizing the journey to slavery on the plantations of Brazil, one of the last countries in the world to abolish it, in the late 19th century.

All of this to the tune of a song that recalled, amid drums, the African origins of samba: “The genuinely black samba, fine flower, ghetto garden, exhaling our affection…”.

The text reads, “What a thrill to see Portela win the gold standard for the Rio 2024 carnival! With an anti-racist theme, the samba school was moved by a moment like this in which Marinete da Silva, mother of our Minister Anielle Franco and the eternal Marielle Franco, paraded in honor of her daughter and so many other women who also lost their children. This carnival proves once again that Marielle lives!

Written by Ana Maria Gonçalves and published in 2006, the novel, considered one of the most important Brazilian works of the 21st century, was the bet of the historic Portela school, which has won the title of champion of the Rio Carnival the most times.

The book received the Casa de Las Americas Prize in the Brazilian literature category, but was ignored by the main competitions in Brazil, dominated until recently by male and white writers.

In front of one of the floats, Victoria Campos, one of Portela’s ‘muses’, glided down the Sambadrome track, wearing a crown of pheasant feathers and butterfly wings on her back.

“Some people in Brazil don’t know the history of struggle of black women, but through the samba school, we can bring it to them,” Campos, who is Afro-descendant, told EFE, adding that the protagonist of the novel reminded her of her mother.

Precisely, Gonçalves, who also participated in the parade, recalled in a recent interview the need to vindicate the role of black and mixed-race female writers, like herself.

“It’s about reclaiming that place and that role that was always assumed by people who spoke about us without listening to us,” the 54-year-old writer told Folha de São Paulo.

The lack of recognition in the cultural world and its 968 pages did not prevent the book from becoming a bestseller with nearly thirty editions and very popular among the Afro-descendant population of Brazil, who lacked books addressing the racism they still frequently face.

Among the attendees at the parade on Monday night was Emanuele Dutra, dressed in Portela’s white and blue shirt. With a half smile, she admitted to having read the novel “superficially” due to its length, but she assured its importance.

“It addresses prejudices that still exist in Brazil,” she said, with a cushion in hand to soften the hard stands where she would sit until well into Tuesday morning.

On the last of the floats, a boat with butterfly wings carried the figure of a mother with a child in her arms, a reference to the protagonist’s quest to find a son who had been sold as a slave.

The winner among the twelve schools that paraded on Sunday and Monday night will be announced on Ash Wednesday.

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