Maíra by Darcy Ribeiro - Book Illustrations

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Redesign, letterings and illustrations for the book Maíra, a novel written by one of the most important Brazilian indigenists, Darcy Ribeiro.

The book Maíra deals with a fictional tribe, the Mairuns, created, according to the author's own testimony, based on characteristics of several Brazilian indigenous groups.

Darcy Ribeiro narrates the story of an Indian named Avá who, adopted by a priest and convinced to follow the priesthood, questions his true faith and comes into conflict for having abandoned his people.

As a boy, Avá leaves his village and moves to Rome. When he returns to his tribe, he experiences intense moments in the search for integration with his people. His drama, at times, arouses indignation in the reader and shows the richness of indigenous culture and its inadequacy to the values of Christian society.

The book Maíra is divided into four chapters that refer to the structure of the Catholic Mass: Antiphon, Homily, Canon and Corpus, which relate to the crisis of faith experienced by the protagonist of the novel. Therefore, to illustrate the initial page of each chapter, I chose to use the symbols of the four evangelists in the Christian tradition: Matthew, Mark, Luke and John - represented respectively by the angel, the lion, the ox and the eagle.

The presence of the coral snake, an endemic Brazilian species, interacting with each of the evangelists brings a dose of tension to the illustrations, which show the contrast and conflicts between Catholic and indigenous traditions.

The chosen color palette is vibrant, built on a variety of shades of green and with contrasting points of yellow, purple and red.

To illustrate the endpapers, I created a pattern freely inspired by indigenous paintings.

In the book, the Mairum tribe is divided between the Jaguar house and the Carcará house. The Jaguar people must take the Carcará people as wife or husband, and vice versa, according to the clan rules that aim to prevent incest between them.

The animals representing the Mairum clans, both being endemic Brazilian species, were illustrated on the back cover of the book.