Identities in Flux: Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil

298 Pages·2021·1.886 MB·English

by  Niyi Afolabi

Identities in Flux
SUNY series, Afro-Latinx Futures
—————
Vanessa K. Valdés, editor
Identities in Flux
Race, Migration, and Citizenship in Brazil
NIYI AFOLABI
Cover image courtesy of Photofest
Published by State University of New York Press, Albany
© 2021 State University of New York
All rights reserved
Printed in the United States of America
No part of this book may be used or reproduced in any manner whatsoever
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For information, contact State University of New York Press, Albany, NY
www.sunypress.edu
Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Name: Afolabi, Niyi, author.
Title: Identities in flux : race, migration, and citizenship in Brazil /
Niyi Afolabi.
Description: Albany : State University of New York Press, [2021] | Series:
SUNY series, Afro-Latinx futures | Includes bibliographical references
and index.
Identifiers: LCCN 2020024651 | ISBN 9781438482491 (hardcover : alk. paper) |
ISBN 9781438482514 (ebook)
Subjects: LCSH: Brazilian literature—History and criticism. | Blacks in
literature. | Race in literature. | Blacks—Race identity—Brazil. |
Brazil—Civilization—African influences.
Classification: LCC PQ9523.B57 A46 2021 | DDC 869.09/981—dc23
LC record available at https://lccn.loc.gov/2020024651
10 9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
To my beloved father, J.O. Afolabi
On my silver jubilee, you departed.
Gratitude for the vision,
Three decades after,
In peace, you rest.

Contents
Preface ix
Acknowledgments xi
Introduction 1
Chapter 1 The Afro-Brazilian Diaspora: From Slavery to
Migrating Identities 17
Chapter 2 Zumbi dos Palmares: Relocating History, Film,
and Print 37
Chapter 3 Xica da Silva: Sexualized and Miscegenated
Body Politics 65
Chapter 4 Manuel Querino: African Contributions to Brazil 103
Chapter 5 Jorge Amado’s Poetic License: Fictionalizing History 123
Chapter 6 Black Orpheus: Regeneration of Greco-Yoruba
Mythologies 153
Chapter 7 City of God: The Ghettoization of Violence 199
Conclusion 231
Notes 243
Bibliography 259
Index 275

Preface
After close to forty years of interacting with Brazil, intellectually, socially,
culturally, and spiritually, in part due to my own African connections
with this Southern American country, I was compelled to ask myself a
few cogent questions, only a decade ago: (1) Why is Brazil so intrinsically
connected to Africa, especially given its more visible Yoruba spiritual
rootedness? (2) What could be teased out, among its historical, literary,
and cultural manifestations as defining “archetypal” icons or subjects that
constitute foundational essences for Afro-Brazilian identities? (3) How
exhaustive are these predominant elements, and why are what is left out
not a deliberate omission but a consequence of limited space and time
for inclusion? (4) Why are other vital forces of the culinary, the archi-
tectural, the carnivalesque, the sacred, even the popular and the profane
all conflated within cultural and historical production? And (5), why
are other intellectual and archival agencies so extensive that one book
cannot possibly exhaust all the daunting possibilities? Since the are often
embedded within questions, let me suggest that my effort here, which one
of the anonymous readers delightfully qualified as “ambitious,” has barely
scratched the surface of an expansive treasure grove for future research. I
am quite pleased with what I consider a major milestone in my navigation
of Afro-Brazilian Studies. Afro-Brazilian identities are indeed constantly
in flux due to their shifting historical and contemporary realities as they
struggle to make sense of the self that is consistently oppressed by the
pyramid of power and racial relations.
ix