Book Club: Juliana Barbassa and The Jaguar's Roar
Book Club: Juliana Barbassa and The Jaguar's Roar
At Americas Society, the author and translator discussed her English translation of the Jabuti Prize-winning Brazilian novel.
Speakers
- Juliana Barbassa, Author and Translator
- Brian Winter, Vice President, Policy, Americas Society/Council of the Americas; Editor-in-Chief, Americas Quarterly
Originally published in Portuguese as O som do rugido da onça (Companhia das Letras, 2021), The Jaguar's Roar by Brazilian author Micheliny Verunschk tells the story of two Indigenous children taken from Brazil in the 1800s to the Bavarian court by two German scientists after an expedition into the Amazon. The novel won Brazil's prestigious Jabuti Award in the Literary Novel category in 2022.
"This act of representing this story shook a lot of people [in Brazil]," said Juliana Barbassa, who debuted as a translator from the Portuguese with the book. "[Verunschk] sees something that merits indignation and she's angry, and she sees this abundance and uses language to show it. [...] I just wanted to go there."
In a conversation at Americas Society in New York with Brian Winter of Americas Quarterly, Barbassa spoke about the significance of the book in Brazil and how she worked to bring this true story, which echoes many voices, including that of nature, to a new audience. "We are at a moment when we're trying to grapple with the impact of climate change. We're trying to grapple with what's happening politically and how do you address it and she does something very effective: people have a part of the narrative, but so do rivers," she said.
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