Literatures and cultures librarian Katrina Spencer is liaison to the Anderson Freeman Center, the Arabic department, the French department, the Gender Sexuality & Feminist Studies (GSFS Program), the Language Schools, Linguistics and the Spanish & Portuguese departments. These affiliations are reflected in her reading choices. “While I am a very slow reader, I’m a very critical reader,” she says.
Pages: 128
The What
“Um sábado qualquer” (“Any Given Saturday: God Behind the Scenes”) is a piece of graphic literature from Brazil. It offers a vision of a god that is precarious, infantile, fallible and almost entirely objectionable. Ruas’s collection employs biblical narratives and motifs, adding an alternative history of what happened “behind the scenes” during creation, ultimately painting Judeo-Christian mythology as haphazard and coincidental. For example, his God character creates many globe-like prototypes for Earth before having to present one, mostly complete, to his father for “publication.” The work is simultaneously humorous and blasphemous and can be found in our language-based browsing collection.
The Why
I grew up with consistent exposure to biblical teachings and learned to question them around the time I was in college. I enjoy this author’s cheekiness in presenting a God character created in man’s image: indulgent, moody and hedonistic. It is fun to reimagine a well known story and to fill in the gaps that were left behind. José Saramago does this as well in his work, “Cain.”
Rating: 4/5 cardigans
Original, creative, quirky but manages to be misogynistic in its satire as it includes easy, archaic jokes against women.
