Obscene Was Her
Middle Name

Cassandra Rios and another woman writer by the name of
Adelaide Carraro became famous for their immorality
and brushes with the military government censorship.

Alessandra Dalevi

Her mother heard her appeal and never read a line of the books the daughter wrote. In 1974, the generals who took over the power in Brazil from 1964 to 1985 agreed with the mother and prohibited 43 of Cassandra Rios's 46 books from being sold in libraries. The reason? They were "unfit for Brazilian families". Rios, who died March 8 in São Paulo, never had the sophistication or the cosmopolitanism of an Anaïs Nin (1903 in Paris - 1977 in Los Angeles), but she used to sell 300,000 books a year, in the late 60s, more than any other Brazilian writer at that time or since, with the exception of author Paulo Coelho.

Cassandra was born Odete Rios, in São Paulo, in 1932, daughter of Spaniards and borrowed her penname from Greek heroine and prophetess Cassandra. She was only 13 when her first work was published: four short stories in the extinct newspaper O Tempo. Her mother gave her the money to publish her first book (A Volúpia do Pecado—Sin's Sensual Delight) when she was 16. That was the first time Odete asked her mother Damiana Rios not to open the book she wrote. When Damiana died in 1998 she hadn't read a word of her daughter's spicy work.

That first novel was a harbinger of stories to come: all filled with steamy bed scenes seasoned with adultery, homosexuality, voyeurism, frigidity, and nymphomania. More than 50 others would follow in the 50s, 60s, and 70s. Cassandra and another woman writer by the name of Adelaide Carraro (1925-1992) would become famous for their immorality and brushes with the military government censorship. Rios was careful to separate her public life from the private one, always refusing to talk about her own intimate life and sexual experiences.

Among her books there were Nicoleta Ninfeta (Nymphette Nicoleta), Carne em Delírio (Flesh in Delirium), Tara (Sexual Perversion), Tessa, a Gata (Tessa, the Pussycat) and A Paranóica (The Paranoid Woman), which was made into the movie Ariella directed by John Herbert. Ariella is a girl who finds out that the man who she thinks is her father is really an uncle interested in her fortune. Upon this discovery she decides to become a prostitute, smearing in the process the name of the family.

Despite the highly erotic content of her books, the author considered herself a moralist. Curiously, her 400-page autobiography MezzAmaro does not talk about sex. Cassandra was labeled by her critics, who were legion, as "pornographer author", "cursed writer", and "flag bearer for homosexuality". In the early 80s, with the end of the official censorship, all her books became available, but by then she had become in fact a moralist and only wrote religious novels. She also started to paint and launched her unsuccessful candidacy to the state assembly of São Paulo. Publishers haven't republished her books, but most of the old titles can easily be found in sebos (used books bookstore).

Cassandra used to complain that people were not able to distinguish between the writer and the characters she wrote about. In a long interview with TPM - Trip Para Mulher magazine in June 2001 she talked about being a woman writer: "I was massacred for writing what I wrote being a woman. Since the dawn of civilization women fight for the right to talk and to think. If a man writes he is wise, experienced. If a woman writes, she is a nymphomaniac, a perverted. I always wrote with the naïveté of someone who is born a writer."

She also confessed having made a chastity vow when her mother was admitted to the ITU. Cassandra says that she has trouble reading what she wrote: "Sometimes I tell myself, "God, did I write this?" When I see one of my books in which the characters are on fire, I skip the page. But art is spontaneous. Sometimes I try to write a light book and, suddenly, things start to happen." The author contends that people who read her books attentively will notice that she is conservative and moralist.

"I'm living very well and very happy by myself," she told TPM. "I believe that people who are always trying to find someone don't like themselves. I live in a home by myself, I love to be by myself, and I never felt loneliness. It is easier to be unhappy when you are with someone else than when you are alone. You don't need to be all snuggled up. Snuggling is for people who are lacking sex and affection."

As American Henry Miller who preferred to be called obscene instead of pornographic, Cassandra likes the sound of obscene: "It's a beautiful, sensual word. Pornographic is something else. My books are not pornographic, they are love books. They talk about the attraction one person has over another."

The author became furious, however, when the interviewer asked her about the book Literatura da Cultura de Massa (Mass Culture Literature) by Waldenyr Caldas in which her work is classified as paraliterature: "Paraliterature is his mother. Motherfucker. Look, I just said a four-letter word. He knows nothing about literature and doesn't know how to write. I haven't read and will not read this book. Anyone can write a book, I want to see who can sell. This kind of stuff pisses me off."

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