Born in the ‘quebrada’, Wesley Barbosa skipped classes to read in the school library
Wesley Barbosa, 33 years old this Thursday 30. Writer from the suburbs, black, born in Itapecerica de Serra, in Sao Paulo.
He alone has sold more than 10,000 books.
Childhood
Wesley’s childhood wasn’t typical of a “normal” kid, after all, there aren’t any funny or cute little kid moments in the hood. The writer has no documents of that time, except memories and emotional memories. “Very strange not to have a memory of one’s face at this stage, but it’s a reality for many,” he recalled.
During school, precisely in the 4th grade, the young man began to take an interest in writing, excelling in writing classes. What no one expected is that Wesley would start skipping classes to stay in the school library and with that, failed for two years. “I started spending more time in the library than in class, nobody went there, I even had a key to the library,” he jokes.
“It was from there that I became a reader, there I read everything I could read. I read Jules Verne, Jorge Amado, which is one of the ones I like best.”
Very sociable with teachers, young Wesley was always chatting with some school professionals in the corridors and when they understood the boy’s passion for reading, they decided to let him spend a year.
Coming from a humble family, with a single mother and being a cleaner, who raised four children by herself, without much study, the family never encouraged him to read, and this passion was born naturally.
“I never met anyone in my house who liked to read. I never got much encouragement from anyone. I started picking up books and enjoying them,” she recalls.
Some people get encouragement from someone or are inspired by their parents to start reading, but with Wesley it was very different. “You see a person who is born on the periphery, in the hood, and he likes to read. It’s a mysterious thing,” he exemplified.
“I think the book took me a little away from the reality I was living, from poverty itself. And there I felt rich through reading. Rich in the sense of leaving that reality through imagination”.
Cursed alley
Generally authors write the books first and leave the title at the end, but in the book damn alley, Wesley wanted to do it differently. After coming up with the idea for the title, he wrote the entire book in just ten days. Every night he set himself the goal of writing ten pages, and so, in the end, a 100-page book came out.
The initial idea was to produce paperback books, which were small and people could take them anywhere. Wesley wanted to “try” and then write a novel. “I worked 10 to 14 hours a day to produce this book. Then I realized I was writing a bigger story,” he recalled.
Like any author, Wesley also puts his characteristics into the characters themselves and it has been like this with the character Mariano, since damn alley, from 2022.
Mariano is the protagonist and, like Wesley, he too loved to read and spent hours at the town library. Another common point is that at one point in life, Wesley needed to collect cans to help with the family budget and the character has done this throughout the narrative as well. Both lived in the suburbs, in the alleys and the writer knows this reality well and wanted to expose it through Mariano.
“Mariano was a character I created to make a declaration of love for literature. It’s a work of fiction, not a biography”, exalts the writer.
“I was very afraid of not having a house to live in, and then I put in a part that he (Mariano – character in the book) was also very afraid of. I was putting some elements of myself, in a character that is very complex. Life is very complex.”
Because he lived in the suburbs, Wesley wanted to bring community slang and expressions to some of the characters. The narrator of the book is cultured, he tells in the first person, but the alley characters speak informally. “I did it on purpose, because I thought it was necessary, because otherwise it would have been stylized. If he was someone who wasn’t from the neighborhood, maybe they would have gone overboard with the slang.”
“The people of the hood are complex, one is not the same as the other, it is not uniform. They are people who speak in different ways,” explains Wesley.
Influence
Even the young man, despite being an “atypical” child, had a childhood full of games and entertainment on the streets of the community. Even though he wasn’t good at soccer, he watched the boys play and play other games like hide and seek and capture the flag.
However, even surrounded by a few friends and colleagues, Barbosa felt lonely, and it was in books that he found refuge from his own reality.
In these games and wanderings, Wesley had his first contact with rap. She says she was a strong influence on him.
“Rap was a literary influence in a way, because, until then, nobody had told me about literature, but rap in a way is literature, it’s poetry,” he said.
Even with no higher education, Wesley has always been self-taught and inquisitive, reading a lot of philosophy, technology, and scientific articles. She is not seen doing anything else in his life but writing. “My dream has always been to be a writer. Until then, I didn’t think I could make any money from literature,” he reveals.
When he was younger he would sketch out lyrics and carry them in his pocket, even show them to some close friends, but he realized that people weren’t interested. “Today they pay to read my lyrics. This is really amazing.”
With new plans and perspectives, Wesley took a new step in his career, he opened his own publishing house. “It was more of a necessity for me to publish my works. Now that I see that I can publish other authors. Until then, it was to republish my works,” he confessed.
“I live only on literature. Do I go to fairs, do I send books by mail, did I participate in Expo Favela 2023?.
Expo Favella 2023
Attend a big event like the Expo Favella it made Wesley even more confident that he was on the right track. The event was held between 17, 18 and 19 March, at the Expo Center Norte, in São Paulo, and saw the participation of entrepreneurs, startups, entrepreneurs and personalities who live the reality of communities. “When I walked in, I saw a lot of black people, from the hood. I thought it was great,” he recalled.
The writer exhibited some of his works, took copies that he had ready for delivery, but it came to a certain point, the books ran out and the writer had to get around the situation. “People started asking. I said, ‘I don’t have these books, I can do a small print run to send them.’ I had to get my notebook the next day and write people’s addresses and names, because they wanted more books and I I had none.”
Some celebrities passed through the event, such as Dudu Nobre, MC Sombra Rap, Eliane Dias, Iceblue – founder of Racionais – , MVBIL and the author took the opportunity to present them copies of some of his works.
Next steps
Wesley still doesn’t know where the next steps in life will take him, but he says he wants to be in the world of books. “If I didn’t have books in my life, I don’t know what it would be like. I couldn’t live differently. For me, writing is a way of being in the world, of being, of observing things”.
In collaboration with a publisher in Rio de Janeiro, Wesley is already writing his sixth book, You can call me Ferdinand which, for the first time, will be on sale in bookstores. Presale starts in April. “My books have never been in bookstores, it will be the first time,” the writer rejoices.
Another fruit that the author will reap in the future is the collaboration with Nichelle Teles, from Bahia, who has been living in France for some years. Through the Internet, friends met and she is currently working on translating the book Cursed alley.
Since Nichelle has worked in publishing companies before, she decided to follow her dream of opening her own and Wesley’s book will be her first publication. By the end of 2023 or the beginning of 2024, the Cursed alley will tour France.
The writer has already sent copies to other countries, such as the United States, Portugal, Mexico City, but always for reading by Brazilians and now he will have the opportunity to launch them so that foreigners can also get acquainted with his works.
“Being translated is another story, I’m very happy,” he said.
publishing market
Wesley, which has already sold 10,000 copies of damn alley, he achieved this by stopping in bars, talking to people on the street, explaining the history of the book, and of course with the help of the internet. With the covid-19 pandemic, people needed to create new hobbies or occupy their minds and it was at this time that Wesley saw the business opportunity and started selling on Instagram.
“Since 2016 I’ve been going up and down Augsburg selling books from hand to hand”.
Wesley realizes that the reality he grew up in didn’t help the choices he wanted to make about the future. “I shouldn’t have been a writer, I shouldn’t even have been a reader,” he says.
She pointed out that the culture in the communities is that you have to finish school and get a job helping around the house. “The family of those who come from the suburbs encourage us to have a formal job.”
The writer also explains that the publishing market is much more difficult for those who come from the periphery. In the hood is not the owner of the publisher who lives there. “How can someone from the neighborhood get in touch with a publisher, or even a journalist,” he asks.
“It’s difficult because I’m a suburban author, because I too am black. Even entering a bookshop I am looked at in a different way. The bookshop is not the place created to let a black man from the favela enter”.
The difficulty begins with a lack of encouragement to read. How can anyone become a writer if he is not a reader?
“I don’t think I’m in the formal publishing market, I’m in the creating publishing market,” explained the author.
The writer also reveals that he likes to sell his books because, as an author, he knows more about his work and it’s easy to encourage people to buy. “I like to convince that person on the street that he has to read that book,” he stressed.
“Words escape when I try to express the days when I didn’t even have rice and beans in the pot and now, at least for that moment, I can eat lunch taking the money I earned from literature out of my wallet,” reads the caption of a post on social media average.
Works already published
Devil at the Back Table (2015)
Funeral Paragraphs (2020)
Complaint of a homeless wretch (2021)
Bloody Alley (2022)
Source: Terra
Ben Stock is a lifestyle journalist and author at Gossipify. He writes about topics such as health, wellness, travel, food and home decor. He provides practical advice and inspiration to improve well-being, keeps readers up to date with latest lifestyle news and trends, known for his engaging writing style, in-depth analysis and unique perspectives.
