Questões de Inglês

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'Torto Arado' by Itamar Vieira Júnior: The Fight for Land Rights in Brazil's Northeast

On May 13th 1888, Brazil became the last nation in the Americas to formally abolish slavery. Over 130 years later, hundreds of thousands of people are still living in modern slavery across the country. Itamar Vieira Júnior is a writer from Brazil's north-eastern state of Bahia. His multi award-winning debut novel Torto Arado (Crooked Plough) is a beautifully written tour de force that unflinchingly gives a voice to the country's silenced Black, Indigenous and Quilombola communities who have been fighting for their land rights for hundreds of years. 'Quilombolas' is the name for residents of Quilombos: settlements originally formed by fugitive slaves. There are roughly 3,000 Quilombos in Brazil today.

Vieira Júnior is a writer who has experienced first-hand many of the themes explored in Torto Arado. Over the past 15 years, he has worked for Brazil's land reform agency INCRA (National Institute of Colonization and Agrarian Reform), which led him to live intimately with the Quilombola communities depicted in the novel, getting to know their stories, rituals and struggles. In an interview to news portal UOL talking about his work with INCRA, Vieira Júnior said "they are communities that resisted, made up of slaves who went from place to place and, after abolition, formed families, communities, in a system of solidarity which is an example for all of us. It's not a perfect system, but it stopped the State from decimating them."

The novel has been making waves on the literary scene both at home and abroad, and it is very deserving of the many accolades it has won. When Torto Arado was first published in Portugal in 2018, itwon the LeYa Prize, Portugal's most prestigious literary prize. And in 2020, Vieira Júnior won two awards: he received a Jabuti Prize, the most traditional and prestigious literary prize in Brazil; and the Oceanos Prize, one of the most important literary prizes for books in the Portuguese language.

Torto Arado "portrays our current reality. I would love to say that it is a novel about a bygone period of our history, but that wouldn't be true. Brazil today is the Brazil that is depicted in the book, which continues to kill those who dream of emancipation and social justice," Vieira Júnior said in an interview with Portugal's Público newspaper. Itis an urgently powerful and personal manifesto against the silencing of Black, Indigenous and Quilombola communities in Brazil.

NORRIS, Isaac. 'Torto Arado' by Itamar Vieira Júnior: The Fight for Land Rights in Brazil's Northeast. Sounds and Colours, 24 fev. 2021.

Disponível em: . Acesso em: 19 nov. 2023. (Adaptado).

Considering the context of the novel "Torto Arado", by Itamar Vieira Júnior, and the provided text, how can the main characters of the book be best described?

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Crooked Plow

 

Crooked Plow, the Brazilian novelist Itamar Vieira Junior's debut, opens with a shocking scene. A pair of young sisters, Bibiana and Belonísia, break their grandmother's rule against going in her room and, while snooping, find a knife. Out of the sort of mysteriously rebellious impulse to which children often yield, both girls put it in their mouths. One is essentially unharmed; one cuts her tongue so badly she never speaks again. Vieira waits until the novel's opening section ends to reveal which one is which, though it hardly matters: They come of age, as Johnny Lorenz writes in his gorgeous translation, "sharing the same tongue."

Crooked Plow is, centrally, about sharing and cooperation. Bibiana and Belonísia grow up in a Black sharecropping village, daughters of a midwife and a witch doctor who is the "spiritual father of the whole community." Both girls learn young that it is no bad thing to support or rely on others, and yet womanhood complicates that lesson. Bibiana falls in love with a union organizer who galvanizes the community, even as landowners' resistance to his work puts his family in danger. Meanwhile, Belonísia, chasing her curiosity about intimacy, goes to live with a loutish drunk who, at best, ignores her. Sex with him is "like cooking or sweeping the floor, just another chore," and yet Belonísia does not stop pursuing either pleasure or independence. Vieira brings both sisters to electric life, but Belonísia's narration is especially immediate and moving.

It would be a privilege to share a tongue with her.

MEYER, Lily. Books: Crooked Plow, On the Edge of Reason, The Forest Brims Over. NPR, Book Reviews, 19 ago. 2023.

Disponível em: . Acesso em: 19 nov. 2023. (Adaptado).

Considering the reference text and the novel "Crooked Plow" by Itamar Vieira Junior, what event involving Belonísia is central to her character development?

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The Fifth Story by Clarice Lispector (from 'The Foreign Legion' − 1964)

 

A peculiar story, with flashes of weirdness that might be genius − that either way are deeply engaging − but like a lot of Lispector's fiction − the whole thing doesn't fully register. Bits don't seem to work. The whole doesn't mesh. And whilst it may well be the case that it shouldn't 'mesh', the whole, that that's the point, the reader is still left cut adrift in a way that feels unsatisfying, however willing we are to make the story 'work'. There are better stories in Lispector's collected works − 'The Smallest Woman in the World' often being regarded as the best for more obvious reasons.

"It is nothing short of miraculous that all of Lispector's short fiction is available in English. Choosing a single story by one of Latin America's finest writers is a cruel exercise but a great entry point to her work is 'The Fifth Story', from her book The Foreign Legion. All her most interesting traits are there: a certain linguistic strangeness, the subversion of domestic space, the sadistic brutality of everyday life, and the metafictional bent that would explode in her later works."

VON HEUSINGER, Klaus. The Fifth Story by Clarice Lispector (from 'The Foreign Legion' − 1964).

Disponível em: . Acesso em: 19 nov. 2023. (Adaptado).

The provided text offers an evaluation of Clarice Lispector's short fiction, expressing both appreciation and criticism. It acknowledges the peculiar and engaging nature of the story, with flashes of potential genius or weirdness.

 

Why "The Fifth Story" from her book "The Foreign Legion" is recommended as a great entry point to explore her work?

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JOHNSTON, Lynn. For Better or For Worse. GoComics. Kansas City.

Disponível em: . Acesso em: 19 nov. 2023. , 27 jan. 1987

 

In the comic strip "For Better or for Worse", by Lynn Johnston, the humor of the story is due to:

O texto seguinte servirá de base para responder à questão.

 

A wildlife refuge pond in Hawaii mysteriously turns bright pink. And drought may be to blame

 

A pond in Hawaii has turned so bubble-gum pink it could be from the set of "Barbie," but the bizarre phenomenon is no cause for a dance party. Drought may be to blame for the strange hue, scientists say, and they're warning against entering the water or drinking it.

Bret Wolfe, the refuge manager, was concerned the bright pink could be a sign of an algae bloom, but lab tests found toxic algae was not causing the color. Instead an organism called halobacteria might be the culprit.

Halobacteria are a type of archaea or single-celled organism that thrive in bodies of water with high levels of salt. The salinity inside the Kealia Pond outlet area is currently greater than 70 parts per thousand, which is twice the salinity of seawater. Wolfe said the lab will need to conduct a DNA analysis to definitively identify the organism.

Maui's drought is likely contributing to the situation. Normally Waikapu Stream feeds into Kealia Pond and raises water levels there, but Wolfe said that hasn't happened in a long time. When it rains, the stream will flow into Kealia's main pond and then into the outlet area that's now pink. This will reduce the salinity and potentially change the water's color.

No one at the refuge has seen the pond this color before — not even volunteers who have been around it for 70 years. The pond has been through periods of drought and high salinity before, though, and Wolfe isn't sure why the color has changed now.

The wildlife refuge is a wetland that provides nesting, feeding and resting habitat to the endangered Hawaiian stilt, known as aeo, and the Hawaiian coot or alae keokeo. It also hosts migratory birds during the winter. The water doesn't appear to be harming the birds, Wolfe said.

As a wildlife refuge, people aren't supposed to wade into the pond or let their pets in the water regardless of its color. But officials are taking an extra precaution to warn people not to enter the water or eat any fish caught there because the source of the color has yet to be identified.

MCAVOY, Audrey. Hawaii wildlife refuge pond mysteriously turns bright pink. And drought may be to blame. AP News, New York, 10 out. 2023. Climate.

Disponível em: .Acesso em: 19 nov. 2023. (Adaptado)

What is the likely underlying cause of the pink coloration in the pond in Hawaii?

T E X T

 

The word ‘viral’ has lost its meaning

 

    The nature of virality has shifted radically over the past decade as the internet has fractured into uncounted disparate algorithms, platforms, and niche communities. The volume of content being churned out every day has skyrocketed, the life cycle of each piece of media has grown shorter and social media platforms continue to inflate public metrics, devaluing previously impressive online stats.

    All of these factors have rendered the term “viral” nearly meaningless, say experts, and have led to a condition we’ll call “viralflation.” The term speaks to the diminished meaning of virality. If everything is labeled viral, then is nothing viral?

    “Back in the day, 1 million views was the thing,” said Marcus Stringer, a partner manager at Social Blade, a social media analytics platform. “That meant you’d gone viral, and you’d get picked up by news agencies around the world. Now, tens of millions of views is the norm for top YouTube channels. Soon, 20 million views will eventually become the norm.”

    “Because the concept of virality has been so watered down, truly viral pieces of content must reach hundreds of millions of people at a scale that’s increasingly unattainable for anyone but MrBeast,” said Lara Cohen, vice president of partners and business development at Linktree, a platform that allows creators to aggregate links to their social media profiles on one page. MrBeast is the internet name of Jimmy Donaldson, YouTube’s most watched creator.

    A decade and a half ago, there was a clear delineation between viral content and the vast majority of media that users would encounter every day. The internet was smaller, and most sharing was manual (people emailing and messaging links to each other) or via early internet aggregators such as sites like Digg and StumbleUpon.

     Viral content emerged slowly, so the life span of a viral video was long. Some content remained viral for up to a year, worming its way through the internet as it gained traction. When social media platforms began to switch to algorithmic feeds optimized for engagement in the mid 2010s, the viral content cycle accelerated, experts said. Brands began recognizing the power of virality and started to attempt to manufacture it. Content creators joined engagement groups where they’d reshare each other’s content in attempts to force virality.

    Platforms themselves also began to realize the power of virality and sought to generate it, or at least generate the appearance of it. This was the beginning of the era of viralflation. Facebook helped lower the industry-wide threshold for what counted as a video view, and began inflating view counts on various Facebook videos in an effort to make them appear more viral than they were.

    Then TikTok broke into the mainstream in 2020, lowering the bar even further for what counted as a “view.” While a view on Facebook counts after three seconds of watch time, a view on TikTok is simply an impression, meaning the video was served to a user for at least a fraction of a second on screen. According to the company, TikTok also counts each loop of the video as a view, allowing videos to rake in massive view counts.

    “The speed at which we cycle through trends and sort of moments of virality on the internet is faster now largely because of TikTok,” Cohen said. This has created an arms race among tech platforms to see which could inflate metrics the most. There’s been an incentive to have these numbers look bigger because they look better to advertisers, so there’s a financial incentive to cause this viral inflation.

    A new class of content creators also has raised the bar for what’s considered viral. “When MrBeast started to explode, things really started to change in the landscape,” Stringer said. “People didn’t consider [earlier metrics of virality] viral anymore, because he’s getting multi millions of views per video.”

    Coco Mocoe, a trend forecaster in Los Angeles, said that along with these shifts, users are also consuming a higher total amount of content online per day, especially members of Generation Z, those born between 1998 and 2012. They are more likely to consume all forms of media through the internet and social platforms, rather than via newspapers or TV. And, much of that content is short form and less than 60 seconds long. “The main reason there are bigger numbers now is because people are consuming so much more content in a given sitting,” she added.

    This has made virality more ephemeral. “There’s not that same… permanence,” Mocoe said. “If you’re watching 50 videos with 1 million views, you’re less likely to remember one as opposed to a decade ago, when you might only watch five videos a day, and just one would have 1 million views.” For the average consumer, viralflation has made it increasingly difficult to tell what is and isn’t actually viral. Because we no longer have any shared sense of virality, it makes it easier for people who don’t understand the mechanics of the internet to fall for fake viral trends.

Adapted from: https://www.washingtonpost.com/ 2024/03/09/

The condition which is called "viralflation" refers to