Maria de Fátima - better known by her pen name Cho do Guri - (24 January 1959 – 7 July 2017) was an

Angola , national_anthem = "Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

n poet and writer.

Biography

Fatima was born on January 24, 1959, in

Quibala Quibala (also written Kibala) is a town, with a population of 27,128 (2014 census),Citypopulation.de
Population o ...

Cuanza Sul Province Cuanza Sul Province ("South Cuanza"; Umbundu: Kwanza Kombuelo Volupale) is a province of Angola. It has an area of and a population of 1,881,873. Sumbe is the capital of the province. Don founded the province in 1769 as Novo Redondo. Histo ...

in Portuguese

Angola , national_anthem = "Angola Avante"() , image_map = , map_caption = , capital = Luanda , religion = , religion_year = 2020 , religion_ref = , coordina ...

. She is the daughter of an Angolan mother and a German father. At two years of age she came to

Luanda Luanda () is the Capital (political), capital and largest city in Angola. It is Angola's primary port, and its major Angola#Economy, industrial, Angola#Culture, cultural and Angola#Demographics, urban centre. Located on Angola's northern Atl ...

where she lived with her mother in the Bairro Operario. At the age of four, her mother took Fátima to a house for disadvantaged children because she could no longer feed her. She developed an interest in poetry at a young age and published her first poem in 1988, in the newspaper Mural da Associação de Estudantes Angolanos em Portugal. Fatima received her primary and secondary education in Luanda. She studied pharmaceutical sciences at the Faculty of Pharmacy at the

University of Lisbon The University of Lisbon (ULisboa; pt, Universidade de Lisboa, ) is a public research university in Lisbon, and the largest university in Portugal. It was founded in 2013, from the merger of two previous public universities located in Lisbon, t ...

, Portugal. She graduated in social policy by the Open University of Lisbon. Her first book, ''Vivências'', was published in 1996. ''Chiquito de Camuxiba'' was published in 2006 and received the African Literature Prize from the Institute of Valle Flor Marquis. Drawing on her childhood experiences, ''A filha do Alemão'' (The German Daughter) came out in 2007 and is about the unwanted mulatto children in Angola. The story took almost two decades to write and originally was titled ''A Filha do Pecado'' (The Daughter of Sin). Economist António Fonseca praised the novel, calling it a "great benefit to study the recent history of Angola" at the same time allowing a person to better understand "the new social classes of Angola" and "know the soul and the recent history" of the country. In 2009, ''A filha do Alemão'' was translated into German by the

Goethe Institute The Goethe-Institut (, GI, en, Goethe Institute) is a non-profit German cultural association operational worldwide with 159 institutes, promoting the study of the German language abroad and encouraging international cultural exchange an ...

. It was part of the official opening of the program of the German Cultural Centre, in Luanda. Chó do Guri has had several poems published in anthologies in Angola and Brazil. She worked as a columnist for the weekly newspaper

Folha 8 ''Folha de S.Paulo'' (sometimes spelled ''Folha de São Paulo''), also known as simply ''Folha'' (, ''Sheet''), is a Brazilian daily newspaper founded in 1921 under the name ''Folha da Noite'' and published in São Paulo by the Folha da Manhã c ...

Works

* ''Vivências'' (1996) * ''Bairro Operário - a minha história'' (1998) * ''Morfeu'' (2000) * ''Chiquito de Camuxiba'' (2006) * ''Na Boca Árida da kyanda'' (2006) * ''A filha do Alemão'' (2007) * ''Songuito e Katite'' (2009) * ''O Cambulador'' (2013) * ''Pulas, Bumbas, Companhia Limitada e muita Cuca'' (2016)

References

{{DEFAULTSORT:Cho do Guri 1959 births 2017 deaths Angolan writers People from Cuanza Sul Province