Books in Portuguese

A long-time friend of Atlantico Books, Professor Sandra Dixon, has recently established her Portuguese program at West Virginia University. She’s been working for a long time to get students studying Portuguese at WVU, and I commend and congratulate her efforts!

As she builds her program, I am working with her to choose some books for her classes. Here’s our latest discussion, and some bilingual (Portuguese-English) Brazilian literature she might use in her classes.

Boa tarde, Elena!

Thank you so much for your wonderful updates!

I am very happy to say that here at WVU, we have started our beginning (Brazilian) Portuguese program. I am coordinating the 101, 102, 203, 204 series, and at present I am working with one graduate teaching assistant who is from Vitória, ES.

In the fall, I’ll be teaching a F(oreign) L(iterature) I(n) T(ranslation) course on Brazilian literature. It will be taught in English, and hopefully will have a high enrollment (i.e., approx. ? 50).  I plan to present an overview of Brazilian literature and I want to include works from all genres.  When I taught this course about 20 years ago, I had the students read a bilingual edition of Paulicea Desvairada (Hallucinated City, trasl. Jack E. Tomlins), J. Amado’s Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, and M. de Assis’ Dom Casmurro as well as other translated works from the colonial period.

I need to come up with a draft of a course syllabus in the next few weeks.

Therefore,  I would greatly appreciate any suggestions for books–preferably anthologies that are reasonably priced–that I can use in my course.  I plan to have students read a J. Amado novel, of course, but I want them to have a wider overview of 20th century Brazilian literature that just Amado’s works.  I am searching for books that can be considered for adoption.

Thank you for any help that you can offer!

Sandra Dixon, Ph.D.
West Virginia University

Here is my reply to Sandra!

Hi Sandra!
That’s great news, congratulations!

As for bilingual books, there’s a new collection that might be good for your class, the River of January books:

Alma Encantadora das Ruas *Bilingual Edition*,

Casa Velha *Bilingual Edition*,

Memorias de um Sargento de Milicias *BILINGUAL EDITION*

Those are the ones that come to mind immediately, but let me know if you have any specific authors in mind, so I can do more research. I’m not aware of bilingual anthologies of Brazilian literature, though there are some great ones in Portuguese, like Missa do Galo e Outros Contos, Vol. 1, A Literatura Brasileira Atraves dos Textos and Os Cem Melhores Contos Brasileiros do Seculo XX.

Thank you and have a terrific day!
Take care,

Elena Como

Atlantico Book Importer, Inc.

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