Project in Minas Gerais could ban Guimarães Rosa.
The Legislative Assembly has filed a bill by Bruno Siqueira, of the PMDB party, that would prohibit private and public schools from distributing books that do not adhere to standard language or that contain excessive sexual content or descriptions of erotic acts. An online petition against the bill has already been circulating.
Minas 247 - A bill filed in the Minas Gerais Legislative Assembly, if approved, could discourage the reading of books by authors such as Guimarães Rosa, Nelson Rodrigues, or Oswald de Andrade, among others, in schools. Bill 1.983/2011, by state representative Bruno Siqueira, prohibits the distribution in the public and private education system of Minas Gerais of any textbook, supplementary reading material, or literary work that does not use the so-called standard form of the language. It also prohibits books with "high sexual content, descriptions of obscene acts, eroticism, and references to incest."
While seemingly well-intentioned, the bill proposed by the PMDB congressman is yet another victim of a prejudiced and simplistic view of language use. By extending the rule to literary works, for example, the eventual law, if approved, would simply remove works by important authors of Brazilian literature from circulation in Minas Gerais schools. Do the works of Nelson Rodrigues, for example, have a "high sexual content"? Probably yes, and that was a distinguishing mark of the author, who brought the language and culture of the typical Rio de Janeiro native to Brazilian theater. Another writer, Guimarães Rosa, from Minas Gerais, created a series of vernaculars in his books, especially Grande Sertão: Veredas. Oswald de Andrade even criticized the use of "standard language" in his poem "Pronominais":
Give me a cigarette.
Grammar says
From the teacher and the student
And of the clever mulatto
But the good black man and the good white man
From the Brazilian Nation
They say it every day.
Forget about it, buddy.
Give me a cigarette.
Representative Bruno Siqueira claims there is confusion regarding the actual content of his bill. There is no mention or suggestion of banning books of any kind, but only prioritizing works that adhere to the formal rules of the Portuguese language.
Last year, Professor Heloísa Cerri Ramos became embroiled in controversy after her book "For a Better Life," published by Global, began being distributed by the Ministry of Education. At the time, the publication was criticized for supposedly encouraging and defending grammatical errors. Over time, several experts, including grammarians and linguists, joined the debate and showed that the work did not propose that.
In an editorial, after days of criticizing the author, the Folha de S. Paulo newspaper ended up making a mea culpa, acknowledging the oversimplification of its criticism. In a debate on the Globonews program Painel, journalist William Waack began by criticizing and then, after hearing the defense of the book by all the invited experts, asked: "So we've embarked on a mess?"
Brazilian congressman Bruno Siqueira has embarked on a campaign and is now facing an online petition against his project. The online petition can be accessed at the following address: http://www.peticaopublica.com.br/PeticaoVer.aspx?pi=P2012N23647.