Banzeiro Òkòtó
- “Banzeiro Òkòtó is at once a work of reportage, a manifesto for social and agrarian transformation, and no less than a blueprint for a new cosmography. . . . Brum may be suspicious of the ‘dogma of hope,’ then, but she never lapses into cynicism or despair. She offers instead community, solidarity, resourcefulness and a bracing defiance.”—William Atkins, The New York Times Book Review
The title Banzeiro Òkòtó features words from two cultural and linguistic traditions: banzeiro is what the Amazon people call the place where the river turns into a fearsome vortex, and òkòtó is the Yoruba word for a shell that spirals outward into infinity. Like the Xingu River, turning as it flows, this book is a fierce document of transformation arguing for the centrality of the Amazon to all our lives.
Praise
“A chronicle as transporting and harrowing as a mighty river. . . . [Brum is] an astute writer of conscience as lyrically intimate, passionate, and precise as Terry Tempest Williams. . . . [Her] fiercely illuminating testimony asserts in fresh and vital ways that the Amazon, the ‘center of the world,’ is essential to life on Earth.”—Booklist
- “Brum adopts an unconventional form to her work as a way of shedding the uncomfortable colonial connotations of her own Whiteness. . . . [A] formidable chronicle of the increasingly deforested world of the Amazon.”—Kirkus Reviews
- “Devastating, extraordinary, and unforgettable.”—Rebecca Servadio, Words Without Borders
“Brum is a powerful, poetic voice for those environmental activists struggling to resist, before it is too late, the further degradation of her life-affirming Amazon.”—Foreign Affairs