Book Review: Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler

´I had a thing for Brazilian girls

Yeah?

Used to love Brazilian porn

Oh my god!´

In Stubborn Archivist by Yara Rodrigues Fowler, a young British-Brazilian woman recounts her random memories of her split identity. Compared to books exploring a double identity, this book does not stand apart from the philosophical/theoretical point of view - as usual, there is always the question of belonging to two worlds without being fully accepted as a member in none of them - but it acknowledges about identities rarely spoken about: Latin Americans, particularly Brazilians, living in Europe. Most specifically, it has to do with the children of mixed couples, when one of the parent is of foreign origin.

The unnamer storyteller - whose story resonates with the author´s herself, who is British-Brazilian, growing up in South London etc. - is a young woman who is exploring her identity while writing, being heartbroken and trying to use her knowledge in working in an area close to home - she is requested to use her linguistic knowledge for a documentary about beauty surgery in Brazil.

Her grandparents visiting from Brazil do face the local customs, the food and the sales on Boxing Day and the cold weather. Her brain may be exhausted from time to time for talking a foreign language, the Brazilian Portuguese that remains a foreign language, no matter her chosen identity - which is, anyway, a process that grows in different, unprogrammed directions, like a hectic tree.

Shortlisted for the Sunday Times Young Writer of the Year Award in 2019, Stubborn Archivist is an interesting debut novel, especially from the point of view of the writing techniques. Being out of the classical storytelling may give freedom to the writer sometimes, a freedom of the mind that can be equated with that beautiful dance on the beach from the end of the novel.

Rating: 3.5 stars