Rio's Feirinha Literária da Santa Rita Returns November 14

Rio de Janeiro's Feirinha Literária da Santa Rita returns this Saturday, November 14, running from 11am to 6pm at the Largo de Santa Rita in the city's Centro district. The free monthly event dedicates its November edition to Afro-Brazilian cultures, bringing together writers, researchers and educators for debates and cultural performances.

What's on the program?

The opening talk, at 11:30am, is titled "O orixá nosso de cada dia" ("Our Daily Orixá"). It features professor Ivanir dos Santos, creator of the Resistência Negra series, and priest João Tokunbó Carneiro, author of Café da manhã com os orixás (Breakfast with the Orixás). Marco Medeiros moderates.

The afternoon continues on three fronts:

• 1pm — a performance by the group Tribos Capoeira.
• 2pm — "Histórias de crias", a session for children and young readers, with sisters Duda and Helena Ferreira, writer Otávio Júnior and Jessé Andarilho, who launches his new work A batalha (The Battle). Henrique Rodrigues moderates.
• 4pm — federal deputy Henrique Vieira, author of O que te faz lutar? (What Makes You Fight?), joins editor Vagner Amaro for "De transgressão e sonho: literatura é liberdade" ("Of Transgression and Dream: Literature Is Freedom"), moderated by journalist Ewerton Ulysses.

The closing event, the Sarauzão da Feirinha at 5:30pm, is led by the collective Coletivo Escrevivendo a Liberdade. The Instituto Caminhos da Palavra produces the fair.

Why does a monthly fair matter here?

Curator Henrique Rodrigues said the monthly schedule keeps debates about Black cultures constant, so they don't remain confined to Black Awareness Month, observed in Brazil every November. That's the mechanism behind the event: a recurring gathering rather than a one-off commemoration, staged in a place whose history does the argument's heavy lifting.

The Largo de Santa Rita itself carries that history. The square was built over the first Cemitério dos Pretos Novos (Cemetery of the New Blacks), where enslaved Africans were buried after dying during the Atlantic crossing or shortly after arriving in Brazil. Holding a literary fair on that ground turns the programming into an act of memory as much as an act of literature.

What does this change for visitors?

Entry costs nothing, and the day mixes book launches with capoeira, children's storytelling and political conversation — a rare spread across age groups and formats in a single seven-hour program. Anyone in central Rio on Saturday can walk in.

For the fair's organizers, the November edition lands at a symbolic moment: Black Awareness Month draws national attention to these themes, and events like this one work to extend that attention across the full calendar.