Democracy Lost and Regained: The World of EYES OPEN Then and Now, a guest post by Lyn Miller-Lachmann

Lost your democracy? How long does it take to get it back?

For the people of Portugal, that number was 48 years. Two full generations. Sónia, the 16-year-old protagonist of my verse novel Eyes Open, was born in 1951 under a stern right-wing dictatorship. Her mother was also born under that dictatorship. In 1967, they’ve only known a world in which women were considered the property of both their husbands and the State. Reproductive rights didn’t exist, and women couldn’t even travel abroad without the written permission of a father or husband. Books and other media were censored, and those who distributed banned materials like Sónia’s boyfriend, Zé Miguel, were arrested, tortured, and imprisoned.

Sónia writes poetry to honor her boyfriend in prison, but speaking out even in this small way leads to dire punishment. Forced to leave school, she becomes a child laborer in a grueling low-wage job. There, she discovers the difference between writing poems to a hero and stepping up to become a hero herself. Through resistance, she discovers her potential and her power, but this discovery comes at immense cost.

The regime that limited my characters’ opportunities, potential, and dreams ended on April 25, 1974. Early that morning, military forces opposed to lack of freedom and endless war in Portugal’s African colonies occupied the streets of Lisbon. Ordinary citizens who had been terrorized for decades now poured outside to join the rebel soldiers. Some of them placed carnations, a popular spring flower, in the barrels of soldiers’ machine guns, a powerful symbol that guns would never again be used against the people. The almost bloodless overthrow of the dictatorship soon became known as the Carnation Revolution.

I lived part-time in Lisbon between 2012 and 2019. In 2014 I wrote a series of articles about the commemoration of the fortieth anniversary, and that experience inspired the characters and story of Eyes Open. That anniversary was the last time that many of the leaders and participants were still alive. They sought to honor key figures who were no longer around, including the army captain who led the insurgent force and a popular, oft-banned musician whose song served as the signal for the revolution to begin.

With the launch of Eyes Open approaching, I attended the fiftieth anniversary celebration to see how much had changed. Had April 25 become like the Fourth of July in the United States, more of a day off and an excuse to party and watch fireworks than a collective educational experience? Yes, there was a lot of that party atmosphere around the country, but I also saw a sober assessment of democracy in peril in Portugal and around the world. The previous month an extreme right-wing party with ties to the dictatorship took 20 percent of the vote in legislative elections.

Across Portugal I saw efforts to educate about the grim lives of people, especially women, under the dictatorship and the need to defend democracy and freedom. The main public library in city of Braga, a historically conservative stronghold in the north, sponsored an exhibit of books banned during the dictatorship. Between 1926 and 1974, all media—books, newspapers, magazines, movies, music recordings, and live performances—had to be submitted to government censors for approval beforehand. The works of both Portuguese and international writers were subject to censorship.

During the dictatorship, many Portuguese writers, artists, and composers were forced into exile. Others remained in the country but stopped creating. Some continued to create the work they believed in and were imprisoned for their defiance, then expelled from the country after their release.

The principal reason for a book’s banning was “immorality.” This category included any mention of sexual activity or substance abuse, and any content that could be considered disparaging to Catholicism, the State religion in Portugal under the regime.

The second most common reason for censorship was the general category of politics. Books with an overtly leftist ideology, or ones critical of the right-wing regime were banned. Classic works of political science fell into this category. In some cases, the book had little or no political content, but the government identified the author as a leftist or subversive. Even when a novel didn’t express an ideology, it would be banned if it depicted the exploitation of workers by landowners or bosses. Or if it showed the Portuguese colonization of Africa in a negative light. Another target of censorship was books that opposed the colonial wars or war in general.

The dour dictatorship of António Salazar and his successor, Marcello Caetano, had little understanding of or appetite for satire. Satiric literature—including classic authors like Voltaire—and songs fell victim to the censor’s stamp.

Finally, there were books in the exhibit that were banned with no reason given at all. And in some cases, an author could not publish because he’d failed to follow procedure—failed to submit the correct documents or meet deadlines.

In 1967, the year Eyes Open takes place,  it could not have been published in Portugal. Sónia’s intimate relationship with her boyfriend, hinted at in her poems, would have outraged the authorities as much as it outraged her elders. The boyfriend goes to prison for subversive activity like binding and distributing the banned poetry of Pablo Neruda “inside the cover / of a castoff third-grade textbook.”. Sónia questions her Catholic faith and denounces the conditions at the hotel laundry where she works 12- hour shifts six days a week.

Today in the United States, we face a rise in book banning and threats to imprison teachers and librarians that harken back to the grim times depicted in Eyes Open. It’s easy to take almost 240 years of freedom and democracy for granted, to trade them for the easy solution of a strongman, if we don’t know how hard and dangerous our lives can become without them.

Meet the author

Lyn Miller-Lachmann is the author of the YA historical novel Torch (Carolrhoda Lab, 2022), winner of the 2023 Los Angeles Times Book Prize for Young Adult Literature and a 2022 Booklist Editors’ Choice, and the YA verse novel Eyes Open (Carolrhoda Lab 2024), chosen by Booklist as a Top 10 Historical Fiction for Youth, 2024. She wrote the picture book Ways to Play (Levine Querido, 2023), illustrated by Gabriel Alborozo, and co-authored with Zetta Elliott the middle grade verse novel Moonwalking (FSG, 2022). Her nonfiction includes a biography of Temple Grandin in the She Persisted chapter book series from Philomel and Film Makers: 15 Groundbreaking Women Directors (co-authored with Tanisia “Tee” Moore) from Chicago Review Press. She translates books for youth from Portuguese to English, including the 2023 YA graphic novel Pardalita by Joana Estrela, published by Levine Querido, whichwas named a Batchelder Honor Book in 2024 and the forthcoming graphic novel Our Beautiful Darkness (Enchanted Lion), by the Angolan author Ondjaki, illustrated by António Jorge Gonçalves.

Website: https://lynmillerlachmann.com

Instagram/Threads: @lynmillerlachmann

Twitter/X: @LMillerLachmann

About Eyes Open

Portugal, 1967. Sónia thinks she knows what her future holds. She’ll become a poet, and together she and her artist boyfriend, Zé Miguel, will rise above the government restrictions that shape their lives. The restrictions on what Sónia can do and where she can go without a man’s permission. The restrictions on what music she can enjoy, what books she can read, what questions she can ask.

But when Zé Miguel is arrested for anti-government activities and Sónia’s family’s restaurant is shut down, Sónia’s plans are upended. No longer part of the comfortable middle class, she’s forced to leave school and take a low-paying, grueling, dangerous job. She thought she understood the dark sides of her world, but now she sees suffering she never imagined.

Without the protection of her boyfriend or her family, can Sónia find a way to fight for justice? This poignant novel in verse follows a teen girl discovering how to resist tyranny and be true to herself.

ISBN-13: 9798765610114
Publisher: Lerner Publishing Group
Publication date: 05/07/2024
Age Range: 14-18

Filed under: Guest Post