Ah, Gabriela, scent and color, a beautiful young woman, almost still a girl, who arrived in the city with a rag-tag band of starving, dirty immigrantsAh, Gabriela, scent and color, a beautiful young woman, almost still a girl, who arrived in the city with a rag-tag band of starving, dirty immigrants from the backlands of northeastern Brazil in the 1920s.
(I added a funny TBR story about this book at the end.)
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Although he’s not in the title, much of the story also follows Nacib, a Syrian Brazilian, whom you can call Arab, but don’t ever call him Turk. He needs a cook for his restaurant. It’s the only restaurant in town that isn’t also a brothel. He hires Gabriela and the romance begins. Maybe he’ll even marry her, but one of the themes in this book is “Wildflowers don’t belong in vases.”
The novel overall is an epic James Michener-type story about the real city of Ilheus, the author’s hometown, and how it grew in its time as the major cocoa-growing region of Brazil. (And it still is.) But all the action is in the present; we get the historical background through narrative and discussion among the characters. Many of the important characters are wealthy ‘colonels’ who won control of cocoa lands through wild-west gun battles between rival cowboy gangs.
This is Brazil in the 1920s so “The Doctor was not a doctor and the Captain was not a captain. Just as most of the colonels were not colonels: the title was merely a traditional symbol of ownership of a large plantation…they were ‘colonels of the most irregulars,’ for many of them had led bands of outlaws for the bloody struggle for control of the land.” The priest is a real priest, but his unmarried housekeeper may be a bit more than that because she miraculously keeps having children.
A young, wealthy man from Rio de Janeiro comes to town. He has big ideas about improving the town. He personally pays to build a public boardwalk on the beach. He helps start a bus company. He wants to dredge the harbor to improve navigation. I guess we can call him a Progressive. (Or a ‘Young Turk,’ but that may no longer be politically correct?). The stage is set for a political battle and maybe even violence because the old reactionary colonels don’t want change and they want to maintain their behind-the-scenes control of everything.
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Women’s lib is nowhere to be found in Brazil in the 1920s. Maybe there’s an inkling of it in one young woman who wants to get an education and doesn’t want to be forced to marry someone chosen by her father. (view spoiler)[ Her father beats her with his horsewhip. (hide spoiler)] But the double standard is supreme – and extreme. If you are a wealthy colonel your wife has a comfortable life with her children and her servants back at the plantation. You keep your mistress in a house in town. You don’t have to worry about your wife finding out because she and everyone else in town knows this.
If your mistress is unfaithful, you dump her and throw her stuff out on the street. Let her go off with her new lover – she’s just a mistress. If your wife is unfaithful, you kill her and her lover. Period. No jury will ever convict you. If you get a good lawyer you probably won’t even be charged with anything. What’s the point? Even the women agree: his wife was unfaithful – what else could he do?
Do these rules apply to Wildflowers? There’s a Pygmalion theme to this novel. Can you take a wildflower, a young woman who has never worn shoes and doesn’t know her last name, or even have one, and turn her into a fine lady?
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I enjoyed the book and the writing. Much of this is satire and tongue-in-cheek. I liked this when someone is visiting one of the old colonels: “His hands shook slightly, his shoulders were bowed, his step was unsteady. " 'You look stronger than ever,’ said Antonio.”
It’s an old Brazilian classic, but not that far back – published in Brazil in 1958. The author was not only progressive but he was elected to Brazil’s parliamentary body as a Communist. Of course, like almost all other well-known Latin American authors of the time, Amado (1912-2001) had to go into exile when military dictators took over.
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Some of his work was not well-received in Brazil. Wiki tells “His depiction of the sexual customs of his land was scandalous to much of 1950s Brazilian society and for several years Amado could not even enter Ilhéus [his home town], where Gabriela was set, due to threats received for the alleged offense to the morality of the city's women.” Amado is best known in English translation for his novel Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands.
Here's a TBR story for you. I’ve enjoyed a lot of Brazilian authors including two others by Amado: Home is the Sailor and Shepherds of the Night. A copy of Gabriela had been staring at me from my TBR shelf for 50 years – since college. It survived book cullings from Massachusetts to Virginia to Ohio to Florida. Just never got to it. Then about a month before I wrote this review my older sister was clearing out stuff and, knowing my interest in translations, she sent me her copy of Gabriela. She had received the book as a prize 60 years ago for being the ‘best Portuguese language student’ at our local high school where many students took Portuguese as their foreign language. It has an inscription of congratulations from the Brazilian ambassador at that time – 1963. (It was published in English in 1962, so it was brand new then.) I gave away my old copy and I read and I am keeping her copy!
Top photo of Sonia Braga as Gabriela from the 1975 Brazilian telenovela based on the book. There was also another telenovela series made in 2012. From Wikipedia. Modern-day Ilheus from alamy.com Map showing Ilheus from pinterest.com The author on a Brazilian stamp from ebay.com
An old man dying in a hospital and on morphine, reminisces to himself and to the nurses about his life. So the entire book is basically a diatribe intAn old man dying in a hospital and on morphine, reminisces to himself and to the nurses about his life. So the entire book is basically a diatribe interspersed with remarks about his care and his feelings about other patients he doesn’t like.
His life was on the downhill side of great ancestors who helped found Brazil and consorted with European royalty. There are family pictures of great-great-grandpa with Queen Victoria. On his mother’s side he tells us he can show us her family tree in the street names of Rio. His own father was a national senator in Brazil, but the dying man never made it that high up the ladder.
Mainly he reminisces about how and why he lost his wife who “disappeared.” (view spoiler)[ Maybe she ran off with another man or perhaps she died in a tuberculosis asylum. He worries still about to what extent she was or wasn’t faithful to him. (hide spoiler)]
Only his daughter comes to visit him. We assume she is elderly too, since he is approaching 100.
Sounds boring but it’s actually quite fascinating and we learn a lot about upper-class Brazil in the 1940s and 1950s. I’ve also reviewed this author’s good book, Turbulence.
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The Brazilian author (b. 1944) has written about 10 novels as well as plays and poetry. From what I can determine, this novel, Spilt Milk, and Turbulence, appear to be the only ones translated into English.
However, he is best known in Brazil as a singer-songwriter, guitarist and music composer. He is well known for bossa nova and samba music.
A celebration of life among the African and mulatto population of the favelas of northeast Brazil in the 1960s. These poverty-stricken folks somehow mA celebration of life among the African and mulatto population of the favelas of northeast Brazil in the 1960s. These poverty-stricken folks somehow manage to survive and to enjoy life while they are at it.
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Many of these folks are con men, thieves and prostitutes but they are good-hearted. You do whatever you can to get by even if it means running a crooked dice game or a scam.
There are three main episodes that structure the flow of the book. The first is the marriage of a playboy to a former prostitute. (view spoiler)[ The marriage is short and mistaken. (hide spoiler)]
The second event focuses on the complexities of a Catholic christening while the ostensible godparents are stand-ins for the African gods in northeast Brazil’s syncretic religious culture.
A third theme is the appropriation of private land and the subsequent battles with the police and government. The squatters fight to earn the right to stay in the shanties they constructed.
These pages are populated by well-developed, believable and lovable characters who remind us what life is all about.
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The author (1912-2001) was a famous Brazilian writer and several of his 30 novels, translated from Portuguese, are considered modern classics. He is best known for novels such as Dona Flora and Her Two Husbands and Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon. (In his picture, doesn’t Amado looks like a cross between Walter Cronkite and Albert Einstein?!) I’ve enjoyed and reviewed Gabriela and Home is the Sailor.
[Revised, pictures and shelves added 5/5/23]
Favelas of Bahia from correio24horas.com.br The author from Britannica.com ...more
I’ll call this an ‘anthropological novel.’ The author was a Brazilian anthropologist who studied and lived with the indigenous Amerindians of Brazil’sI’ll call this an ‘anthropological novel.’ The author was a Brazilian anthropologist who studied and lived with the indigenous Amerindians of Brazil’s rainforest. It was written in the 1970s and since then, despite Brazil’s on-and-off efforts at preserving their lifestyle, the semi-isolation that the Amerindians once lived in is now of a bygone era. At the time this book was written the Indian areas were being invaded by traders, loggers, government officials and Protestant and Catholic missionaries.
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The story begins with an Indian returning home after many years of study to become a Catholic priest. (view spoiler)[ At the end of his studies he decides to return home and not to take his final vows. (hide spoiler)]
By coincidence he arrives back in his village with a psychologically insecure Brazilian woman who is escaping from her sexually promiscuous urban life and looking for a ‘cause.’ The man is lost between the two worlds and eventually realizes that just as he found he could not fit into the modern world, he ‘can’t go home again’ either.
The Brazilian woman finds happiness as a ‘common woman’ among the Indians but right at the beginning of the novel we realize her fate: (view spoiler)[ she will die alone in childbirth along a riverbank. (hide spoiler)] That, and some action adventure in the rainforest, is really all the plot.
The story is written in an interesting fashion but about half of the book (translated from Portuguese) is taken up with the customs and the life view of this particular tribe. We learn a lot about the lifestyle and cosmology of the Indians, their gods and earth-creation myths, so it’s a bit much for fiction. Perhaps ‘faction’ is a better descriptor. And it kind of overdoes the ‘noble savage’ theme.
The author (1922-1977) was a well-known scholar in Brazil and in all of Latin America. He wrote about 25 books, most of which were scholarly works in anthropology and ethnology. Only a couple are available in English. He wrote five novels, of which Maira is his most widely read and the only one translated into English. Among his other accomplishments, he was for a time Minister of Education in Brazil and the first president of the University of Brasilia.
[Revised 4/23/23, spoilers hidden, pictures and shelves added]
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Top photo by Rodrigo Abd of AP on apnews.com The author from iree.org.br...more
Fordlandia tells the story of Henry Ford's settlement in the Amazon, a model of inept planning and design. Even by pr[Revised, pictures added 4/22/23]
Fordlandia tells the story of Henry Ford's settlement in the Amazon, a model of inept planning and design. Even by pre-green standards, the arrogance and ignorance are shocking: chop down the rainforest; plant rows of rubber trees that couldn't thrive as monoculture; plank down Cape Cod bungalows on a suburban-style street grid; dress the kids in scout uniforms and send them to American-style schools named after Ford's sons.
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Basically the plan was to 'convert the natives' to the American lifestyle. Ford was indeed ahead of his time but unfortunately, not in a good way. The idea of the world's foremost industrialist bulldozing the Amazon rainforest set the tone for environmental disasters to come. Even in the late 1920s, when the settlement was started, many scientists of the time could have predicted failure.
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But Ford, arrogant and impatient, so undervalued expertise other than his own that he even cultivated the (erroneous) belief that he was illiterate.
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Greg Grandin's book is readable and retains interest but jumps around chronologically. Some chapters are mini-biographies of key figures in the project so we get the feeling of going over the same territory several times. Still worth a read. It's well illustrated with back-and-white photos.
Top image from wbur.org Workers from Henry Ford Collection on allthatsinteresting.com Photo from the book on americanscientist.org ...more
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