São Paulo – Founder of the Brazil Friendship Group in the Middle East, Brazilian-born Livia Jasmin Tawil launched on Monday (27) in Beirut, Lebanon, her first book. Something between a novel, personal accounts, and the story of the Brazil Friendship Group, Proximidades – Destinos entrelaçados de brasileiras no Líbano [Proximities – Intertwined paths of Brazilian women in Lebanon] portrays women who left Brazil to start a new life somewhere else.
“In the book, I talk about this choice. The book aims to preserve this memory, the story of Brazilian women in the Brazil Friendship Group who live in Lebanon. All of them came here by choice of living here. They made a brave choice,” the author says, pointing out that many women left their families, friends and even their careers.
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She herself is an example of this fresh start. Daughter of a Lebanese from the Homisieh-Jezzine region, Tawil was born in Salvador, Brazil. She married a Lebanese cousin, and in 1997 she moved to the Middle East country. The social worker established the Friendship Brazil Group still in the ’90s, where at first Brazilian women met to talk and cook Brazilian dishes like feijoada and brigadeiro.
The group’s activities go beyond that, though. The institution is now registered at the Lebanese government, is supported by Brazilian organizations in Lebanon and seeks to keep the Brazilian tradition alive in the community living in the country. Helping the Lebanese society via philanthropy is one of the group’s principles.
Book on Brazilian women
“What led me to write this book was this necessity to appreciate women, the women’s rights, that grit, that strength, that resilience of women starting over from the scratch,” she told ANBA.
The launch was held in the headquarters of the Guimarães Rosa Institute in Beirut, an agency of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Brazil to promote the Brazilian culture and the Portuguese language abroad.
Find out more
Proximidades – Destinos entrelaçados de brasileiras no Líbano
Livia Jasmin Tawil
Publisher: Dar Saer Al Mashrek
Translated by Guilherme Miranda
