If you have seen [this building](https://www.cnc.pt/wp-content/uploads/2020/03/memorial-evocativo-centenario-sophia.jpg) while being in Lisbon you have seen a memorial to our greatest female writer: Sophia de Mello Breyner Andresen.
Born in a wealthy family of Danish and Belgian ancestry, she became Portugal’s greatest woman, saying things like *Why the others shut up but you don’t*
However I don’t think her books were that good, even being children’s books, she has a book about a girl falling in love with a fish that had an impact on my childhood because it was really gross (*A fada Oriana*) a book about a Danish Knight who is lost on a forest (*O cavaleiro da Dinamarca*) and a boy who falls in love with an imaginary girl (*A menina do Mar*)
Her books are the same: simple but weird stories that have no deeper meaning, just some pages with ink and nothing more.
Sophia’s books are bad but they are the first books every portuguese person reads and that is why everyone here knows about them. I dont know why she deserves a monument.
*We see, we live and we read, we can’t ignore that*
– Sophia de Mello.
by CRNXD38
1 Comment
When I Googled “famous Portuguese woman” the top three names were:
1. Amália Rodrigues (1920 – 1999) Portugueuse singer who popularised the fado genre of music and become its most noted exponent.
2. Carmen Miranda (1909 – 1955) Portuguese-born singer and actress but she moved to Brazil as an infant and is normally considered Brazilian.
3. Sophia de Mello Breyner (1919-2004), Portuguese poet and writer. Your description of her as a writer of weird children’s books doesn’t mention her poetry. In 1999 she became the first woman to receive the highest Portuguese award for poetry, the Prémio Camões (Camões Prize). She also translated Dante and Shakespeare into Portuguese.