2024-04-29 17:39:28
As a young woman, Aurea Pereira Steberl climbed out of the window every two weeks late in the evening to dance samba until shortly before sunrise at the “Muralha,” a dance hall in Belo Horizonte. The “Muralha” smelled of grilled meat and freedom, and whenever the band played the song “Bole Bole,” Aurea, in her red dress with matching feathers in her hair, danced so fast at the front of the stage that you could see her feet with her eyes could hardly follow. Then she forgot about her sick mother, her violent father and her brother who, unlike her, was allowed to study and didn’t even appreciate it. But her happiness was always short-lived: her father often caught her returning and beat her with his belt. But young Aurea didn’t let herself be stopped. Neither from her father nor from other adversities in life.
She made a living as a domestic helper, beautician and gold digger. Survived starvation, malaria, a murder attempt. And finally came to Germany. The Frankfurt patron and author Paula Macedo Weiß describes all of this in a book. Aurea Pereira Steberl has been her friend for two decades, including being her household help for 17 of those years. Pereira Steberl’s story shows what it means to grow up black in Brazil – and how books can change lives.
On a cold, gray day, Aurea Pereira Steberl, now in her mid-60s, sits upright in an armchair in Paula Macedo Weiß’s living room, who has taken a seat on the sofa. During the pandemic, the two say they were forced to spend a lot of time here. And talked about the past. Macedo Weiß says: “Then she said things like: ‘That time he almost killed me’. And I: ‘What? Almost killed?’ That’s how we got to the details.” “And at some point I asked Paula if she would like to write a book about my life,” says Pereira Steberl. “She’s a writer, after all.”
Pereira Steberl has been passionate about books since she was a child
Pereira Steberl’s enthusiasm for books was awakened as a young girl. At that time, her uncle gave her “Sagarana,” a volume of stories in the style of magical realism that memorialized the people from the Brazilian hinterland in rural Minas Gerais – people like her. The book made young Aurea dream of another world. “There is a saying in Portuguese: A person has to plant a tree, have a child and write a book,” says Pereira Steberl. Anyone who plants a tree can watch it grow, thrive and bear fruit. “And every woman dreams of having a child.” – “No, Aurea, we have to talk about that again,” Macedo Weiß interrupts her – as a feminist and intellectual. It’s more about collecting fruit, passing something on. From the tree , with the child and with the book.
In the book that has just been published, Macedo Weiß reflects on her role as a white privileged author, but focuses on the life of Aurea Pereira Steberl. The simple title fits this: “Aurea”. At one point Macedo Weiß thought about calling it “As várias vidas da Aurea”, “The many lives of Aurea”. In fact, Pereira Steberl’s life would have provided material for many books.
Survivor: Aurea Pereira Steberl has always managed to fight her way through.Frank Röth
In the 1950s, she was born as her mother’s sixth child – and the first to survive. The family fled from poverty from Belo Horizonte to São Paulo, where they starved, sometimes living in their father’s truck, sometimes among rats in the truck camp. They later lived in a little house in the country; young Aurea had to look after her brothers and the household while her mother cleaned. If the father was there, he terrorized his family. Once young Aurea licked a pan and her father hit her in the face as punishment, breaking her nose. If a grain of rice was still stuck in the pot after rinsing, he pushed his daughter’s head into the sink. “And then the moment came when I freed myself and jumped,” says Pereira Steberl today. “So far that there was an ocean between us.”
She experienced discrimination at school
She had long doubted her country of origin. In fourth grade, she was supposed to audition at a school festival wearing a lace dress with puffed sleeves. But on the day of the performance, the teacher had another girl dance in her place. A school employee said to eleven-year-old Aurea: “They took you out because you are black.” As a teenager, she ran the household of a rich Brazilian woman until she could no longer tolerate the fact that she forbade her employees to eat in the kitchen: her There is room outside, with the dogs.
Pereira Steberl worked in a cosmetic studio and a photo laboratory until she became pregnant without marriage and her father threw her out on the street. In order to give her daughter a better life, she went to a gold mining camp in the Amazon. Four days on the bus, two days on the boat, then a flight, the first of her life. Everyone in the camp dreamed of wealth. But anyone who found gold and couldn’t keep it to themselves ended up disemboweled in the river, their bodies full of stones.
First Pereira Steberl worked as a cook and nanny in the camp, then malaria struck her down. There were no medicines in the jungle, fever attacks and hallucinations made her despair, and she didn’t have money for the return flight. A man fell in love with Pereira Steberl. She taught him to read and write, and in return he gave her gold nuggets. After a year, enough was collected for the return flight.
In Belo Horizonte she met a wealthy man and moved in with him. She broke up again because of his jealous attacks. One day he stood in front of her door: he wanted to talk. She let him in – and he stabbed her with a knife, missing her heart by millimeters.
She left Belo Horizonte, moved to Rio de Janeiro, and worked as a domestic helper for a Brazilian woman who was married to a German. She met a friend of his, also German. He asked her to come with him to Germany. The two got married and Pereira Steberl brought her daughter with them. In Brazil there was never enough money to live on, but in Germany she was able to save enough to send money to her family. And stayed.
She hasn’t learned German in all these years: it’s too difficult. She enjoys reading and writing. She wrote a diary for decades. But she didn’t want to show her notes to Macedo Weiß: it was too intimate. Instead, she told her about her life for hours. For several years now, since she has felt comfortable in Germany, Pereira Steberl has stopped writing a diary. Now you can read in print what she experienced. “Does that make you happy?” asks Macedo Weiss. “Very,” says Pereira Steberl. “I will only read the positive reviews. I ignore the others.”
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