Book Review of Crooked Plow by Itamar Vieira Junior

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book stats:

288 pages, to be published in English on June 27, 2023 (I read this book as an Advanced Reading Copy)

you may enjoy this book if you like:

Brazilian Literature * Literary Fiction * Magical Realism

travel inspiration:

This novel is set in northeast Brazil in a quilombola, a community that dated back to the settling of escaped slaves and included a mix of individuals who had been brought as slaves from Africa as well as indigenous Brazilian populations. While slavery was abolished in Brazil in 1888, the population continue to live and work as tenants on plantations without rights to the land and homes that had been theirs for generations. It was only in 2003 that the Brazilian government finally recognized land rights. Without much prior knowledge of Brazil’s history, I found this to be an interesting setting, which provided me with insights into the social movements for equality and recognition.

about the author: Itamar vieira junior

Brazilian writer Itamar Vieira Junior is relatively new to the literary scene. Prior to his 2018 publishing of Crooked Plow, he had published a series of short stories. He has received multiple awards for his novel, and it is finally being translated into English for the first time.

review of crooked plow by Itamar vieira junior

Crooked Plow begins with the curiosity of two young sisters going awry. Belonisia and Bibiana, enamored by a shiny knife they find tucked away in luggage under a bed, decide to explore the taste of the metal. They wonder: Will it taste like a spoon? This activity is as ill-fated as it sounds with both receiving serious injuries to their tongues, rendering one essentially mute for life.

This is not the only way that fate is stacked against these sisters and their impoverished quilombola community. As mere tenants on the land of a series of rich plantation owners, they are only allowed to inhabit non-permanent structures so the houses are built out of mud and need to be rebuilt periodically, as every rain erodes the safety of the walls. The community is, in essence, filled with sustenance farmers, eking out a hard existence without any permanence to their homes or belongings, or even their rights to their own labors.

But what sisters Belonisia and Bibiana do have in the category of good fortune is a loving relationship with each other and their immediate family. All of this changes as they mature and their paths divert. One sister heads off to the city with her new husband in pursuit of social justice and the other becomes a wife of a local man, who nearly succeeds in eroding her sense of self during their short marriage.

Against the backdrop of these two lives and their surrounding community, the novel explores the social injustices of the system into which this family was born and the right for recognition. Crooked Plow is beautifully written, managing to be both sad and optimistic at the same time. Throughout the novel and particularly in the final third, the ever-present world of the spirits, invisible beings in-and-of the community, mingle the story arc of this time and place across a broader, universal purpose, nicely tying together the time-bound fights for justice within this story with these same needs on a more universal scale.

For those who have read novels by other South American authors, perhaps most popularly Isabel Allende, the tone and structure of the novel will feel more familiar than what is more common in the U.S. For both the individual story and the broader message, I recommend Crooked Plow, and expect it will make others want to learn more about the history of Brazil, too.

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