By Queiroz She was raised by intellectuals on a ranch in the semi-arid desert of the northeastern Brazilian state of Ceará, and the region – with its periodic droughts, bandits, mystical remote-land deserts, and forgotten men and women – figures prominently in its writings.
His creative abilities were recognized early, and he began working as a journalist for the regional newspaper. Or Ceará at the age of 16. His first book, Or fifteen (1930), was a newly conceived genre of novel that dealt with families forced to abandon their homes in the drought of 1915; shows a special sympathy for the role of women in this semi-feudal society. Although it bears the hallmarks of a first novel, the book is also notable for its attempt to reflect spoken language rather than literary, and was acclaimed by sophisticated critics in Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo.
A clumsy attempt to intrude on the plot of his second novel, João Miguel (1932), ended his short-lived relationship with the Communist Party. His third novel, Path of Pedras (1937), is the story of a woman who rejects her traditional role and embraces a new sense of independence. What Three Marias (1939), her first work written in the first person, follows the lives of three friends from their meeting in a nun’s school to adulthood, exposing both the inadequate educational system and the limited role allowed for women in Brazilian society. .
By Queiroz he moved to the Ilha do Governador in Guanabara Bay (near Rio). There he perfected the chronicle, a prose subgenre of short, often poetic prose pieces that vary in form and subject matter. His chronicles were published weekly, and in 1948 he compiled several of them in the book A donzela ea moura cake. She was instrumental in establishing that genre in Brazil. His novel Or galo de ouro (“The Golden Rooster”) was first serialized in 1950, but she was not happy with it, and completely modified it for the 1985 version.
The first of his three plays, Lampião (1953), deals with the actions of that legendary bandit and his lover, Maria pretty, who abandons her husband and children to follow him. Most of the critics preferred his second work, To Blessed Maria do Egito (1958), which updates the legend of the martyr Santa María Egipciaça, setting the action in a small Brazilian backwater. His third effort was Theater (nineteen ninety five).
Much of the later life of By Queiroz it was dedicated mainly to the writing of chronicles. He garnered a mass audience for his short journalistic essays on topics of general interest, and published several subsequent collections, including O Brasileiro perplexo (1963), Or tattoo hunter (1967), As menininhas and other chronicles (1976), and Mapinguari: chronicles (1989).
Among his latest works of fiction are Dôra, Doralina (1975) and Maria Moura Memorial (1992, filmed as a miniseries for Brazilian television in 1994).
In 1993 By Queiroz was awarded the Camões Prize, the most prestigious and remunerative prize awarded to literature in the Portuguese language. In 1977, De Queiroz became the first woman elected to the Brazilian Academy of Letters. She was a member of the Federal Council of Culture from 1967 to 1985 and in 1966 she was a delegate to the UN.