The year 2025 marks the centenary of the birth of José Dias de Melo, one of the most enduring and resonant voices in Azorean and Portuguese literature. Born in 1925 on Pico Island, Dias de Melo was a writer of deep humanity and rare dedication to the lives of those who lived on the margins—the whalers, the peasants, the teachers, the emigrants, the islanders whose stories had long gone untold. Through his attentive, grounded, and committed prose, he shaped lives etched by time and salt, silence and survival.

His first book, Toadas do Mar e da Terra (1954), began a literary journey spanning decades and genres: poetry, novels, chronicles, ethnography, travel writing, and oral history. His most iconic works, such as Mar pela Proa, Vida Vivida em Terras de Baleeiros, and Na Memória das Gentes, have become essential reference points in the literature of the Azores, not only for their narrative richness but for their profound testimonial value.

Dias de Melo’s writing maps human dignity in a world shaped by harsh landscapes and unforgiving seas. His characters carry time in their bodies—the wrinkles of struggle, the wear of work, the silence of migration—and in their eyes, the sea: a place of sustenance, of departure, of memory and loss. With every sentence, he revealed the quiet heroism of daily life, portraying not abstract symbols but real people: those who stayed, those who left, and those who longed to return.

At the heart of his vision lies a commitment to the Azorean condition, but one that never closed itself to the world. While rooted in Pico’s volcanic soil and black rock, his narrative universe reaches across the Atlantic. Like the whalers who inspired his prose, his words journey far beyond the islands’ coastlines. He documented not only what it meant to be Azorean but what it meant to be human in a world of inequity, labor, displacement, and community.

For this reason, Dias de Melo’s centenary must also be commemorated throughout the Azorean diaspora. In communities across North and South America, in cities like New Bedford, Toronto, Montreal, San Jose, Tulare, Fresno, San Diego, and Rio de Janeiro, among many others, thousands of Azorean families will recognize themselves in the faces of his characters and in the rhythms of his prose. For many, his work offers the only literary mirror in which their grandparents’ or parents’ lives are reflected with care, respect, and truth

His voice is essential not just to the literature of Portugal but to the transatlantic experience. The Azorean diaspora—one of the oldest and most enduring in the Portuguese-speaking world—carries a cultural memory that often risks fading into the distance of generations. Dias de Melo helps preserve that memory, keeping it alive in language, story, and image. He offers the descendants of emigrants a way back—not always to the physical islands, but to an emotional and cultural homeland that still lives in their families.

Celebrating Dias de Melo in 2025 is reaffirming the place of Azorean voices in world literature. It is to bring his books back into schools, libraries, universities, community centers, and homes. It is to read again, and for many to read for the first time, the chronicles of those who labored under sails and stars, who faced economic exile and cultural silencing, and whose dignity he so faithfully preserved.

Time etched their faces, and the sea reflected in their eyes. Through Dias de Melo, those lives were recorded, honored, and given a voice that continues to echo.

One hundred years after his birth, his words still call to us—reminding us of who we are, where we come from, and how literature can serve as both memory and compass.

Between April 8th of 2025 and April 8th of 2026, may it be a time of remembrance and rediscovery—of reading, listening, and sharing the stories that made us.

Diniz Borges

Editor’s Note: We would love to have Bruma Publications translate and publish one of his books. A ver vamos!

PBBI thanks the Luso-American Education Foundation for their support.