Lua has a hungry look on her face as she holds her new book on former South African president Nelson Mandela, one of thousands the 12-year-old has amassed for her new library in a poor Brazilian favela.
“I don’t read books. I devour them,” she said in Rio de Janeiro’s Tabajaras neighborhood, a shantytown perched in the hills overlooking the chic districts of Copacabana and Botafogo.
In a small tin-roof room at a local community center, she has amassed a collection of 18,000 books, hoping to help other residents access a world that can be all too remote from Brazil’s impoverished favelas.
Photo: AFP
“Lua’s World,” she calls the library, a cozy space lined with pillows and full to the brim with carefully arranged rows of books.
Lua, her nickname, means “Moon” in Portuguese.
However, Raissa Luara de Oliveira — her full name — has her feet firmly on the ground.
“At 12 years old, I’ve done more for my neighborhood than you’ve done in your whole term,” she told Rio de Janeiro Mayor Marcelo Crivella in a defiant video she posted online.
The idea for the library was born six months ago, when Oliveira was at a book fair.
“I saw a mom telling her daughter she couldn’t afford to buy her a book for three reals [US$0.60],” she said. “I said to myself: ‘You have to do something.’”
Surreptitiously using her grandmother’s cellphone, she sent out a Facebook post asking for book donations.
Then, pretending to be her grandmother, she sent a message to the vice president of the local community association, asking her to give her a space to create a library.
The woman, Vania Ribeiro, guessed right away that it was Oliveira, but she agreed to the plan.
“If you run it, I’m in,” she replied.
“When I found out she was doing all this behind my back, I scolded her,” said Oliveira’s grandmother Fatima, 60, a seamstress who has raised her since she was a baby.
“After that, I supported her all the way,” said the woman Oliveira calls “Mom.”
Oliveira’s bubbly video message went viral, leading to invitations to appear on a string of TV programs.
Her project is so successful it has been receiving about 1,500 books a week — way more than her small library can hold.
Behind the shelves, she has boxes full of books she wants to donate to similar projects elsewhere in Rio de Janeiro and in Brazil’s poor northeast.
“A boy in Piaui State told me I had inspired him to open a library for the children in his city. I set aside 500 books for him, but we need money to send them. I’m going to make another video to ask for donations,” she said.
The library is a hit with children in the favela.
“I love coming here. I come almost every day. It gives me something to do when I’m not at school,” said 10-year-old Daniel Couto Nascimento, relaxing on a big cushion and reading a comic book. “I used to just spend my time playing football and video games.”
Oliveira was not a reader, either, but when she was nine, a teacher introduced her to Diary of a Wimpy Kid, American author Jeff Kinney’s cartoon novel on the pre-pubescent angst of middle school.
She was hooked.
Now her reading list includes big, serious books on subjects such as racism and religious tolerance.
“I’ve seen my father get slammed against the wall by police just because he’s black,” she said.
“I’ve been called ‘voodoo girl’ online by a guy who claimed my hair is this color because I stole it from Europeans,” she said of her blond-tinged curls.
Attacks like that just inspire her to keep doing what she is doing, she said.
Her next project? Open a shelter for stray dogs and cats in her favela.
POLITICAL PRISONERS VS DEPORTEES: Venezuela’s prosecutor’s office slammed the call by El Salvador’s leader, accusing him of crimes against humanity Salvadoran President Nayib Bukele on Sunday proposed carrying out a prisoner swap with Venezuela, suggesting he would exchange Venezuelan deportees from the US his government has kept imprisoned for what he called “political prisoners” in Venezuela. In a post on X, directed at Venezuelan President Nicolas Maduro, Bukele listed off a number of family members of high-level opposition figures in Venezuela, journalists and activists detained during the South American government’s electoral crackdown last year. “The only reason they are imprisoned is for having opposed you and your electoral fraud,” he wrote to Maduro. “However, I want to propose a humanitarian agreement that
ECONOMIC WORRIES: The ruling PAP faces voters amid concerns that the city-state faces the possibility of a recession and job losses amid Washington’s tariffs Singapore yesterday finalized contestants for its general election on Saturday next week, with the ruling People’s Action Party (PAP) fielding 32 new candidates in the biggest refresh of the party that has ruled the city-state since independence in 1965. The move follows a pledge by Singaporean Prime Minister Lawrence Wong (黃循財), who took office last year and assumed the PAP leadership, to “bring in new blood, new ideas and new energy” to steer the country of 6 million people. His latest shake-up beats that of predecessors Lee Hsien Loong (李顯龍) and Goh Chok Tong (吳作棟), who replaced 24 and 11 politicians respectively
Young women standing idly around a park in Tokyo’s west suggest that a giant statue of Godzilla is not the only attraction for a record number of foreign tourists. Their faces lit by the cold glow of their phones, the women lining Okubo Park are evidence that sex tourism has developed as a dark flipside to the bustling Kabukicho nightlife district. Increasing numbers of foreign men are flocking to the area after seeing videos on social media. One of the women said that the area near Kabukicho, where Godzilla rumbles and belches smoke atop a cinema, has become a “real
Archeologists in Peru on Thursday said they found the 5,000-year-old remains of a noblewoman at the sacred city of Caral, revealing the important role played by women in the oldest center of civilization in the Americas. “What has been discovered corresponds to a woman who apparently had elevated status, an elite woman,” archeologist David Palomino said. The mummy was found in Aspero, a sacred site within the city of Caral that was a garbage dump for more than 30 years until becoming an archeological site in the 1990s. Palomino said the carefully preserved remains, dating to 3,000BC, contained skin, part of the
RSS