Dear Readers:  I have invited Adriana Zardini to write occasional posts for our JASNA-Vermont blog, and today I append her first post.  I “met” Adriana during last winter’s Oxford University online Jane Austen class , where we were all infected with her obvious love of Austen!  Her insights and comments were invaluable and I all the more impressed because English is not her native tongue.  She has started the Jane Austen Society of Brazil, writes a wonderful blog The Jane Austen Club  [“Jane Austen Sociedade do Brazil”  – a bilingual blog in Portuguese and English, with others available, all compliments of Google], and is a very busy Mom and teacher.  In this first post, Adriana  begins by telling us about how she first discovered Austen and the joy of discovering fellow Janeites in Brazil…

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Hello! I’m Adriana Zardini, the president of Jane Austen Society of Brazil [JASBRA] and it’s a pleasure to me to write in Deb’s blog! I met Deb in an online course at Oxford University about Jane Austen in beginning of this year.  Since then, we always send emails and messages at Facebook.

I’m an English teacher in a private College here in Brazil and I teach in a federal high school too. I teach Portuguese for foreign students and really love computers and internet. Last year I finished my master degree in Technological Education and I evaluated some software to learn/teach English in my research. Nowadays, I’m preparing to take the Doctor’s degree exams, I intend to research about literature discussed online and its effects in readers understanding of the books. I’m married to Carlos Eduardo and we have a daughter called Isabella (she’s 8 years old). As a good Janeite, Isabella knows who is Mr Darcy and Jane Austen’s books! Of course, she didn’t read Jane’s books yet, but I already bought Austen’s books for little girls (in English). I want to read the books to her, and later she can decide if she wants to read the unabridged Austen’s books.

Here’s my family:

Carlos Eduardo, Isabella and me

I read a Jane Austen’s book for the first time when I was undergraduate. I took a teaching and a bachelor’s degree in Arts and Language, and my major is English Language and its literatures (British and American). When we’re studying the British literature from the 19^th century in 1999, our teacher Thais Flores, asked us to read Emma and discuss the movie (with Gwyneth Paltrow). At that time, I had lots of other books to read about British and American literature, so I was impossible to read the other books from Jane Austen. In 2001, when I was studying at The City University of New York, I bought some Austen’s books and started reading it! I really like them!

In 2006, the orkut.com was a success here in Brazil, so I entered in a community called Orgulho e Preconceito (Pride and Prejudice) and there I made new friends from all over Brazil; I met some girls from my city too. Since people asked so many questions about Jane in this community, in February, 2008 I started a blog called Jane Austen Club in order to put information about the writer, her books and movies/tv series based on her books. I discovered this was the first blog/website in Portuguese entirely dedicated to Austen! People started to leave their comments and I started to write more posts too. In the end of 2008, I went to Rio de Janeiro and there I met lots of girls! I used to take my Jane Austen doll with me, so Jane was seen in Rio too! Of course, the girls from other cities in Brazil meet each other frequently! And when I had to travel to a different city I tried to find Janeites there too!

Here are the photos from the meeting in Rio:

Stand up – From the left to the right : Rozely, Simone, Lia and Andrea.
From the left to the right: Ana Maria, Márcia, Elaine and me (black t-shirt)

And here’s Jane in Rio!

In 2009, I decided to invest in Jane Austen’s biographies and books related to her in order to learn more about the author. In this year too, we had a meeting here in my city, Belo Horizonte, and we decided to start a Jane Austen Society here in Brazil since we wanted a formal group, not just people talking they love Jane and her books. Here is the picture from this meeting:

From the left to the right: Ana Maria, me, Cláudia and Pollyana

We had just 2 months to plan and organize our First National Meeting. In the next post I will talk more about our First National Meeting, ok?

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Thank you Adriana for sharing with us your beginnings with Jane Austen – we look forward to hearing more about you and your fellow Brazilian Janeites! And how wonderful that we can all connect so easily in this modern world of online classes, Facebook, Twitter, and blogs!

Further Reading:

• You can visit Adriana’s lovely blog Jane Austen Sociedade do Brazil where you can subscribe to email alerts
• Adriana and JASBRA are featured in the current issue of Jane Austen’s Regency World Magazine in the article “The Latin Touch: How Jane’s Fame is Spreading in Brazil”

[Post by Adriana Zardini, via Deb]