Bisa Bia, Bisa Bel

Ana Maria Machado

2 ideas

1. Bel carries her great-grandmother inside her

   Isabel (Bel) finds an old photograph of her great-grandmother Beatriz (Bisa Bia) as a girl among her mother's things and begins carrying it with her. After the photo is lost, Bisa Bia goes on speaking from inside her, urging old-fashioned ladylike manners around a boy Bel likes. A second voice then appears, her future great-granddaughter Neta Beta, who mocks those rules and pushes toward independence. Bel must act while both voices argue in her head.

2. Identity as a braid of generations

   Bel concludes that she is neither her great-grandmother's copy nor her great-granddaughter's rebel, but a braid in which past, present and future strands are woven together. Each strand keeps its own character, yet only the interweaving makes a single, stronger whole. Selfhood is built by choosing how to combine inheritances, not by picking one and discarding the other.

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