Of Wind and the Other: Literary Journalism by a Portuguese Female Travel Writer

• Autor(a) principal: Baltazar, Raquel
• Data de Publicação: 2020
• Outros Autores: Amorim, Rita
• Tipo de documento: Artigo
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Repositório Científico de Acesso Aberto de Portugal (Repositórios Cientìficos)
• Texto Completo: http://hdl.handle.net/10400.5/29334
• topic: Raquel Ochoa; Literary Journalism; Travel Literature; Portuguese Female crónicas

Raquel Ochoa is a contemporary Portuguese writer who is deeply passionate about traveling and writing. This study analyzes her 2008 book, O Vento dos Outros (The wind of others), a series of travel crónicas across Central and South America, with the aim of situating Ochoa within Portuguese literary journalism. For six months, the author drifted aimlessly from the Andes in Costa Rica to Patagonia in Argentina, describing the theatre of reality from a sentimental woman’s perspective. Ochoa, a travel writer who immersed herself to meet the Other, uses “their winds” to reveal alterity. In a literary and subjective style, Ochoa reveals Latin American landscapes as well as detailed personal encounters and adventures with real people through an exploration of the senses and emotions. Moreover, her critical portrayal of the social plight of the Latin American peoples, a by-product of colonization and globalization, confers Ochoa a place in Portuguese literary journalism.