Carla Madeira, author of 'Tudo é rio', discusses controversial forgiveness and violence against women

Carla Madeira understands time. She understands that seconds, hours or even the Gregorian calendar are not synonymous. For the writer from Minas Gerais, time is the space between events, whether they are defeats or victories, losses or gains, joys or sorrows. All deserve the same attention. “I need some time in silence,” says the author. “This contemporary world focuses on performance, on doing, on surrender. Astonishment and anguish are uncomfortable, right? It takes courage to sustain this discomfort nowadays.”

Her observant and attentive nature could be explained by her birthplace, Belo Horizonte. There, sensitivity is intrinsic. Daughter of Ulisses Carneiro, a former Marist religious in his youth, and Irlanda Madeira, the first reader of the best-seller “Tudo é rio”, Carla was always encouraged to express herself artistically. And the result could not have been different: the journalist and publicist achieved the position of being the only Brazilian writer (and the only fiction writer) to appear in the ranking of the 10 best-selling books in Brazil in 2023, according to a survey carried out by Nielsen BookScan.

Her first book, “Tudo é rio”, was first published in 2014 by the independent publisher Quixote from Minas Gerais and re-released in 2021 by Record. According to a survey by her current publisher, more than 131 thousand copies were sold in 2023 alone and more than 350 thousand printed and digital copies since the re-release. In addition to the best seller, Madeira is the author of two other works, “A Natureza da Mordida” (also published by Quixote) and “Véspera” (the first published by Record), and is working on a new book.

With such positive figures, he has had fewer uncomfortable moments, but he has managed to maintain introspection. His theory about silence was proven at Casa Vivo. The meeting, which could have been singular, proved to be plural and welcoming.

We are in a great hurry: to decide, to conclude, to be certain. This overwhelms our potential and does not help us deal with an open situation. Sometimes it is not possible to conclude something because it is simply not the time to be ready.

PRIMARY ART

I have dedicated my time to artistic creation since I was very young. When I was nine years old, I was given a guitar and learned to play a song by Caetano Veloso, “Deus e o Diabo”. It has three chords and I thought I could compose. And so I started composing, from a very young age. Later I studied painting and theater. I had many privileges, but the greatest of all was having parents who always encouraged me to experiment with all these artistic languages.

CREATIVE HELPLESSNESS

Sometimes, we feel something that is disorganized inside us, that we have not been able to direct, we do not know what it is. We do not like to feel this because it has no name. This interval is called helplessness. In these moments, we have to be generous with ourselves because they are usually very creative moments.

WRITING PROCESS

When I started writing 'Tudo é Rio' I didn't know what I was doing. I started doing a fun exercise, a way to occupy my time. I kept writing until I organically wrote a very violent scene. I didn't have the maturity to deal with this situation that I had proposed to myself and it paralyzed me for 14 years. I mean, it paralyzed my writing, but the book didn't stop being written, right?

NEW BOOK

I write everything down, I don't waste anything. I'm an antenna when I'm writing. In fact, I can appropriate and use everything you said, you know [laughs]? Sometimes I wake up with a crazy sentence in my head, and I say 'what's that?'. It's the opening of a chapter or something that throws me into a place of challenge. The book I'm writing is much more chaotic than all the other books. I told my husband that I need to stop now and structure myself a little, because there are some very intense things.

CONTROVERSIAL FORGIVENESS

When 'Tudo é Rio' began to resonate with readers, the issue of forgiveness became a big issue in my life. I became deeply passionate about this subject. Can a woman forgive a man who was violent towards her? Can we forgive the unforgivable? Forgiveness as something close to impunity is not forgiveness, it is a mistaken view. Forgiving is not forgetting: it is a certain accounting between memory and forgetting. It is remembering enough so that it does not happen again and forgetting enough so that the pain does not reoccur every day. So that she [the victim] can move on, so that she can escape the hands of the aggressor and take a path to freedom. If every day I wake up and relive the aggression, I am in the hands of the aggressor.

I had three partners and at a certain point it was very difficult because we were disagreeing, misunderstanding each other, and having a lot of difficulty doing things that were once basic. We hired a psychologist to work with us and it was transformative in our self-knowledge and how we got to know each other as a team. The coolest thing that can happen is realizing what you can't handle. I don't believe in professional development without personal development.

FAITH AND RELIGION

I come from a religious family, my father was a Marist and I saw his faith. The subject was a matter of deep perception for me and perhaps I needed words to organize all of this. The other day I went to the Brazilian Academy of Letters to give a conference and I wrote a text that said: 'mother may not believe, but it is very difficult for a mother not to have faith'. I pray and ask for protection every day, all the time, but I can no longer have a religion. The worst thing we have done to each other, in humanity, was through religion. I cannot believe in an invented God, full of interests, who is not in the place he should be, which is love.

INTERNAL AND EXTERNAL CRITICS

I studied the creative process a lot [Carla taught copywriting at a college in Belo Horizonte] and there is one thing that is very real: the most destructive thing is judgment. If you judge while you are creating, you will not open up. And when you do not open up, you will not create. In the case of writing, it is an intimate experience. When we are writing, we do not have to worry about the outside world. Of course, every author wants to be read. Any artist who works on a work, at some point, wants to share it. But, while you are going through the process, this experience needs to be completely yours. Once you publish a book, it is no longer yours. The reader reads through the voices he knows, his concepts, prejudices, life experiences. He will read with his infinite interpretations and this reading will be his alone.

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