Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis Many historians consider Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis to be one of the greatest writers in history. He used only a shortened version of his own name (Machado de Assis) as his pen name. Similar to most authors his popularity only began steadily rising after he passed away about 100 years ago. The peak of popularity during his life was when he reached the status of the first President of the Brazilian Academy of Literature. Assis was greatly influenced by his early life, the death of his mother and sister, and feeling a lack of enthusiasm for his culture. The early life of Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis, influence the way he wrote articles, poems, and books. Assis was born June 21, 1839 in Rio de Janeiro Brazil. His father, Francisco de Jose Assis was a mulatto wall painter. He lead his family to living a simple middle class life. His mother, Maria Leopoldina da Camara Machado was a washerwomen. Sadly, she passed away while Joaquim Maria …show more content…
Frequently, the country is divided into 5 partitions. Norte, Nordeste, Centro-Oeste, Sudeste, and Su I, are the title given to each region. Most occupants of Brazil at the time were from african descent, although some were from European and Japanese descent. Even though there is the distinction of the five regions, the greatest segregation was by wealth status. The wealthier the family, he farther south they lied; and vice versa. The poorer the family, the farther north they lived. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was not enthusiastic about his culture and cultural events surrounding him. He would tend to ignore social questions as Brazilian independence and abolition of slavery. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis was extraordinarily self conscious about nationalism or feeling/showing any pride towards his country. Assis wrote “Crisalidas” which is a collection of short stories in order to explain his