Prefeitura de Corumbá 2018 — Questão 32 · Sinônimos | Synonymous

Instrução: As questões de números 21 a 35 referem-se ao texto abaixo. Os destaques ao longo do texto estão nas questões.

Oprah on Maya Angelou

01___Since the moment I opened I Know Why the Caged Bird Sings, I've felt deeply connected to

02 Maya Angelou. With each page, her life _____ to mirror mine: In her early years she was ___ by

03 her grandmother in the South; as a young girl she was raped; and, like me, she ____ reciting

04 what the church folks called little pieces—a few lines from the Bible that ____ usually delivered

05 amid shouts and amens from the women fanning themselves in the front pews. Meeting Maya on

06 those pages was like a meeting with myself. For the first time, as a young black girl, my

07 experience was validated.

08___And it still is, only now I sit at Maya's feet, beside her fireplace, hardly believing that, years

09 after reading Caged Bird, she is my mentor and close friend. When we met in Baltimore more

10 than 20 years ago, our bond was immediate. We talked as if we had known each other our entire

11 lives; and throughout my twenties and in the years beyond, Maya brought clarity to my life

12 lessons. Now we have what I call a mother-sister-friend relationship. She's the woman who can

13 share my triumphs, chide me with hard truth and soothe me with words of comfort when I call

14 her in my deepest pain.

15___She speaks of what she knows. Born in St. Louis in 1928, Maya moved to rural Stamps,

16 Arkansas, to be with her grandmother after her parents split. When she went back to St. Louis in

17 the mid-1930s, her mother's boyfriend stole her virginity. In the aftermath of that trauma, 8-

18 year-old Maya became mute and rarely opened her mouth to speak for several years. At 17 she

19 had her only child, Guy. A few years later, when her grandmother died, the grief sent her reeling.

20 It was then that she gave herself what one might call a Maya manifest: She would live—fully.

21___So she did. She became a celebrated calypso singer and dancer in a San Francisco cabaret.

22 In the late 1950s she moved to New York and took part in the Harlem Writers Guild and befriended

23 literary greats such as James Baldwin, who later encouraged her to tell her story in Caged Bird.

24 In the years that followed, her renewed zeal for life would take her and Guy to many countries

25 throughout the world. In 1961 she moved to Cairo, where she worked at the Arab Observer, and

26 a few years later she went to Ghana to teach at the University of Ghana's School of Music and

27 Drama. As a result of her travels, she became fluent in French, Italian, Spanish, Arabic and Fanti,

28 a West African language.

29___Today Maya is a kind of quintessential everywoman: essayist, entertainer, activist, poet,

30 professor, film director and mother-and she recently guest conducted the Boston Pops simply

31 because she felt like it. She has written more than 20 books, and she once had three titles—

32 Caged Bird, The Heart of a Woman and Even the Stars Looked Lonesome—on The New York

33 Times best-seller list simultaneously for six consecutive weeks. In 1993 she became the first poet

34 since Robert Frost in 1961 to write and recite a poem at a presidential inaugural ceremony—a

35 performance for which she won a Grammy for Best Non-Musical Album. She’s a Tony-nominated

36 actress who has appeared in such productions as Look Away (1973) and Roots, a 1977 miniseries;

37 and she made her feature-film directing debut with the 1998 Showtime movie Down in the Delta.

38 All that, and she cooks like a champion: She prepares the kind of food that makes you want to

39 take a bite and tell about it.

40___(______)

41___It is here, in her home, that I feel as comfortable as I do in my own—at the table where we

42 always flop down and catch up, in the sculpture garden in her backyard, in the kitchen where the

43 sweet smell of pumpkin soup wafts through the air. In these hours together, we can set aside all

44 pretensions and just be: two women barefoot in a living room, sharing the most intimate parts of

45 our lives. When I am with Maya, unimportant matters melt away—her presence feels like a warm

46 bath after an exhausting day

Fonte: adaptado de http://www.oprah.com/omagazine/oprah-interviews-maya-angelou/all#ixzz5BhXsFcyH

What is the most approximate synonym of ‘to soothe’ (l.13)?