Brazil bookstore celebrates female-authored books

By Nayara batschke

São Paulo, Jun 8 (EFE).- In a modest parlor in one of São Paulo’s busiest streets is Gato Sem Rabo, a bookstore selling books written by women.

Some 1,800 female-authored books of all categories from fiction, history to education are shelved in a 65-square-meter space.

This “unprecedented” movement is seeking to fill the gap in the historical injustices women writers have experienced over the centuries.

“Our objective is to demystify this false notion that literature written by men is universal, because it is not like that,” Johanna Stein, owner of the bookstore, told Efe.

“Women wrote a lot, on various topics, but they were condemned to fulfill social obligations that kept them away from literary production,” she added.

Stein’s idea was born in 2018, but after facing difficulties in finding bibliographical references of women thinkers, her project only came to life three years later.

“I realized the importance of discovering and rediscovering these women, bringing them to the center of the literary dialogue,” she said.

The name Gato Sem Rabo (Cat without a Tail) is in reference to Virginia Woolf’s essay A Room of One’s Own.

The name “is a tribute to those cats without tails, to those women who despite being devoid of time, legitimacy and a their own space, had the courage to write,” Stein said.