Questões de Inglês - Reading/Writing - Biography

                   Alice Munro

[1]     Alice Munro (born July 10, 1931, 
Wingham, Ontario, Canada—died May 13, 
2024, Port Hope, Ontario) was a Canadian 
short-story writer who gained international 
[5] recognition with her exquisitely drawn 
narratives. The Swedish Academy dubbed her a 
“master of the contemporary short story” 
when it awarded her the Nobel Prize for 
Literature in 2013. Munro’s work is noted for 
[10] its precise imagery and narrative style, which is

at once lyrical, compelling, economical, and 
intense, revealing the depth and complexities 
in the emotional lives of everyday people. 

    Munro was raised on what she called 
[15] “this collapsing enterprise of 
a fox and mink farm, just beyond the most 
disreputable part of town.” Her mother, a 
teacher, played a significant role in her life, as 
did her great-aunt and her grandmother. She 
[20] attended the University of Western Ontario but 
left after two years of studying English and 
journalism. At age 20, in 1951, she married her 
first husband, James Munro, and moved 
to Vancouver. She moved again in 1963, 
[25] to Victoria, where the couple started a 
bookstore and together raised three daughters. 
After her first marriage ended in 1972, she 
returned to Ontario and settled in Clinton, near 
her childhood home, where she lived with her 
[30] second husband (married 1976). 

    Munro had begun writing stories as a 
teenager, and she persevered in her attempt to 
establish herself as a writer despite years of 
rejection from publishers and the limitations 
[35] imposed on her career by the responsibilities 
of marriage and motherhood. Her first 
collection of stories was published as Dance of 
the Happy Shades (1968). It is one of three of 
her collections—the other two being Who Do 
[40] You Think You Are? (1978; also published 
as The Beggar Maid: Stories of Flo and Rose) 
and The Progress of Love (1986)—awarded the 
annual Governor General’s Literary Award for 
fiction. Lives of Girls and Women (1971) was 
[45] conceived as a novel but developed into a 
series of interrelated coming-of-age stories. 
Like much of her fiction, the tales capture the 
social and cultural milieu of her native 
southwestern Ontario. Munro embraced the 
[50] mystery, intimacy, and tension of the ordinary 
lives of both men and women, rooted in the 
uncharted and ambivalent landscape of what 
affectionately came to be known as “Munro 
country.” 

[55]    Her later volumes include Something 
I’ve Been Meaning to Tell You (1974), The 
Moons of Jupiter (1982), Friend of My 
Youth (1990), A Wilderness Station (1994), 
and The Love of a Good Woman (1998). The 
[60] latter volume received 
both Canada’s esteemed Giller Prize (later the 
Scotiabank Giller Prize) and the National Book 
Critics Circle Award in the U.S. Her book Open 
Secrets (1994) contains stories that range in 
[65] setting from the semicivilized hills of southern 
Ontario to the mountains of Albania. 
In Runaway (2004) Munro explores the depths

of ordinary lives through the use of temporal 
shifts and realistically rendered reminiscences; 
[70] it also was awarded the Giller Prize. The View 
from Castle Rock (2007) combines history, 
family memoir, and fiction into narratives of 
questionable inquiries and obscure replies. In 
2009 Munro won the Man Booker International 
[75] Prize; that same year she published the short
story collection Too Much Happiness. 

    Like much of her oeuvre, the stories 
in Dear Life (2012) were unified by 
examinations of sex, love, and death. Four of 
[80] the stories in the collection were explicitly 
framed as fictionalized autobiography meant 
to encapsulate the aging Munro’s feelings 
about her life. She told an interviewer 
that Dear Life, her 14th collection, would be 
[85] her last. She issued several compilations of 
previously published material, 
including Selected Stories (1996) and Family 
Furnishings: Selected Stories, 1995-
2014 (2014). 

[90]    Munro’s short story about the 
domestic erosions of Alzheimer disease, “The 
Bear Came over the Mountain,” originally 
published in Hateship, Friendship, Courtship, 
Loveship, Marriage (2001), was made into the 
[95] critically acclaimed film Away from Her (2006), 
directed by Sarah Polley and starring Julie 
Christie and Gordon Pinsent with Michael 
Murphy and Olympia Dukakis. Other 
film adaptations of Munro’s work 
[100] include Hateship Loveship (2013), which was 
based on the title story of her 2001 collection, 
and Almodóvar’s Julieta (2016), a mystery-
drama inspired by several stories in Runaway. 

    With the exception of Canadian-born 
[105] American author Saul Bellow (who won the 
prize in 1976), Munro was the first Canadian—
 as well as the 13th woman—to be named the 
Nobel literature laureate. 

Adapted from: https://www.britannica.com

        Rebeca Andrade: Meet the athlete

                                                             Julia Yohe

                                    Jun. 13, 2024 5:04 pm ET

    Rebeca Andrade is 25-years-old and 4-foot-9. She was born May 8, 1999, in Guarulhos, Brazil. She has seven siblings, three of them — Yago, Henrique and Igor — also trained as gymnasts during their child hood.

    The athlete was raised by a single mother, Rosa Santos, who worked as a maid. So, she began the sport at age 4, but with seven siblings and a single mother, her family didn’t have much money to help with her training. Her brothers often walked her to the gym when they couldn’t afford a bus pass — a trek that took over two hours. Rebeca’s mother also would sometimes walk to work, loaning Rebeca her bus pass to get to the gym more easily. However, at age 9, she moved away from her family to a high-performance training center in Curitiba. A year later, she moved to Rio de Janeiro.

    Rebeca Andrade is one of 11 women gymnasts to medal in every event at the World Championships, and one of three in the 21st century. With her silver medal in the all-around competition at the 2023 World Championships, she joined Simone Biles (gold) and Shilese Jones (bronze) in making up the first-ever all Black all-around podium at a world championship.

    With a silver medal in the all-around at the Tokyo Olympics, Rebeca Andrade became the first Olym pic medalist for Brazil in women’s gymnastics. Three days later, she won the first Olympic gold medal for Brazil in women’s gymnastics when she finished first in the vault event final.

Source (adapted): https://www.nbcolympics.com/news/rebe ca-andrade-meet-athlete

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    Claude Monet was a French artist known for painting in the style called Impressionism. Monet was famous during his lifetime, and his paintings remain popular today. They are on display in art museums around the world.

     Claude Monet was born on November 14, 1840, in Paris, France. He drew and painted as a young man. In the 1860s he became friends with other artists, including PierreAuguste Renoir. The group of artists became known as the Impressionists because of Monet’s painting called Impression: Sunrise.

    Most of Monet’s subjects were from nature. Like other Impressionists, he was fascinated by the way light and shadows change during the day. He often painted the same scene again and again to show all the variations of light and shadow.

    In the 1880s Monet settled in Giverny, outside of Paris. There he painted one of his most famous series of paintings, called Water Lilies. Monet died on December 5, 1926, in Giverny.

(https://kids.britannica.com)

Texto - Influence on Others - Part I 

    Not only was Pelé a symbol of Brazil, he was a symbol within the
structures of Brazilian society. At this time in Brazil as Galeano descri-
bes, “in the global social pyramid, blacks are at the bottom and whites
are at the top. In Brazil this 1s called “racial democracy” (1) This social
hierarchy was rigid in Brazil, like in so many countries, and few of those
born on the lower end of the chain were able to navigate their way to
the top. Some of the rare few who could climb the social ladder were
athletes who gained fame and status, both social and economic, through
their athletic prowess.

    Clearly Pelé was such an athlete. Galeano comments: “With the
passage of time, the old soccer mutilated by racism gave way to splen-
dor of its diverse colors. And after so many years it is obvious that
Brazil's best players have always been blacks or mulattos. All of them
came up from poverty, soccer offers a shot at social mobility for a poor
child”(2) Pelé's ascent from birth into a poor Brazilian family to beco-
ming an international superstar was evidence of the socially-mobilizing
tool of football.

    To other poor Brazilians, Pelé was a source of hope and confidence
that they too could overcome their hardships. Journalist Joao Luiz de
Albuquerque said of Pelé's impact: “He was the light at the end of the
tunnel. All the poor said, “hey, this guy made it, I can make it.” He
brought the rest of Brazil with him:”(3).

• (1) Galeano, Eduardo. Soccer in Sun and Shadow. London UK: Verso 1998. Page 43.
• (2) Galeano 43
• (3)Kirby espn.com. Also on this topic: Murray, Bill. The World's Game: A history of Soccer. University of Illinois Press: Chicago 1996. Page 120.

From: https://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/rescarch-projects/brazil/pele/influence-on-others/. Accessed on 01/11/2023

Texto - Influence on Others - Part I 

    Not only was Pelé a symbol of Brazil, he was a symbol within the
structures of Brazilian society. At this time in Brazil as Galeano descri-
bes, “in the global social pyramid, blacks are at the bottom and whites
are at the top. In Brazil this 1s called “racial democracy” (1) This social
hierarchy was rigid in Brazil, like in so many countries, and few of those
born on the lower end of the chain were able to navigate their way to
the top. Some of the rare few who could climb the social ladder were
athletes who gained fame and status, both social and economic, through
their athletic prowess.

    Clearly Pelé was such an athlete. Galeano comments: “With the
passage of time, the old soccer mutilated by racism gave way to splen-
dor of its diverse colors. And after so many years it is obvious that
Brazil's best players have always been blacks or mulattos. All of them
came up from poverty, soccer offers a shot at social mobility for a poor
child”(2) Pelé's ascent from birth into a poor Brazilian family to beco-
ming an international superstar was evidence of the socially-mobilizing
tool of football.

    To other poor Brazilians, Pelé was a source of hope and confidence
that they too could overcome their hardships. Journalist Joao Luiz de
Albuquerque said of Pelé's impact: “He was the light at the end of the
tunnel. All the poor said, “hey, this guy made it, I can make it.” He
brought the rest of Brazil with him:”(3).

• (1) Galeano, Eduardo. Soccer in Sun and Shadow. London UK: Verso 1998. Page 43.
• (2) Galeano 43
• (3)Kirby espn.com. Also on this topic: Murray, Bill. The World's Game: A history of Soccer. University of Illinois Press: Chicago 1996. Page 120.

From: https://sites.duke.edu/wcwp/rescarch-projects/brazil/pele/influence-on-others/. Accessed on 01/11/2023

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Brazilian Poet Manoel de Barros Dies Aged 97
11/14/2014 8h56
From São Paulo Contribution for Folha from
Campo Grande

     The author who wrote verses from the "depths of the trifling", as it features in a poem and one of his books, poet Manoel de Barros died on Thursday morning, November 13th, aged 97, in Campo Grande, in the state of Mato Grosso do Sul - MS.

     Manoel de Barros was born in Cuiabá and throughout his life he wrote 18 poetry books, in addition to children's books and autobiographical accounts.

      He received a number of literary prizes, two of which were Jabuti prizes (Tortoise prizes) - one in 1989 for "O Guardador de Águas" and in 2002 for "O Fazedor do Amanhecer".

     Manoel de Barros used to say that "poetry is not supposed to be understood, it is supposed to be incorporated. Understanding it creates a wall. One ought to try to be a tree"

(Texto adaptado. Fonte: Disponível em: . Acesso em: 24 out. 2021)