Socorro Acioli

Who is Socorro Acioli?

Socorro Acioli was born in Fortaleza, Ceará in 1975. She is a journalist, has a master’s degree in Brazilian literature and is currently following a PhD. in Literary Studies at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Rio de Janeiro. She started her career in 2001 and since then has published books of various genres, such as biographies Frei Tito and Rachel de Queiroz, children’s short stories and youth novels. In 2006, she was selected to take part in a workshop called ‘How to tell a tale’, conducted by the Nobel Prize Winner Gabriel Garcia Marquez at the San Antonio de Los Banõs International Film and Television School, Cuba. The author was selected by the very García Márquez himself for the synopsis of the novel A cabeça do santo/The Head of the Saint, still unpublished. In 2007, she was a visiting researcher at the International Youth Library in Munich, Germany. She has also given lectures in several countries such as Portugal, Bolivia and Cape Verde. Mrs. Accioli is also a translator, essayist and literary theory teacher.

Vende-se uma família/A Family for Sale, her first youth novel, tells the story of the friendship between Álvaro, the son of the owner of the largest farm in Aquiraz, Ceará and Benício, a slave from the farm. They become friends in their early childhood and are separated after Maria Luanda, Benicio’s mother, is sold. According to Fernanda Coutinho, teacher and literary critic, it is a narration that "flows quickly, following the steps of the brothers until adulthood, maintaining continuously aroused the curiosity of the reader about what is to come and, at the same time, makes them look through a portrait of the Brazilian family through the conjunction of customs of the three races that gave origin to it. The leaves of the album transcribe African and indigenous rituals such as the arts of healing, the belief in the magic power of the herbs, the singing and dancing, as expressions of joy and consolation, funeral ceremonies, rituals of listening and storytelling as sources of spiritual nourishment".