Books: Brazilian Culture

The Brazilian Sound

Biographies      Love & Sexuality     History Of Brazil
Politics Of Brazil     Racial Issues    Religion In Brazil
Santo Daime/Ayahuasca   Spiritism  Women In Brazil

Brazilian Culture Books, A-Z

At Home In The Street:
Street Children Of Northeast Brazil
by Tobias Hecht

Through innovative fieldwork and ethnographic writing, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why - given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns - there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions that participants called "radio workshops," street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researchers would be unlikely to pose. At the center of this study are children who play, steal, sleep, dance, and die in the streets of a Brazilian city. But all around them figure activists, politicians, researchers, "home" children, and a global crisis of childhood.--book description

Brazil In Focus: A Guide To The People,
Politics And Culture (In Focus Series)
by Jan Rocha

Brazil is a land of global superlatives, boasting the best soccer, the largest rainforest and the world's worst social and economic inequity. Its vibrant culture is best known for Carnival and samba and attracts thousands of visitors every year. The Carnival capital of Rio also showcases Brazil's contrasts, as the shanty towns of the dispossessed cling to spectacular mountainsides, overlooking the beach playgrounds of the rich. Brazil In Focus is an authoritative and up-to-date guide to the giant of Latin America. It explores: the history, the people, the politics, the economy, the Amazon and the environment, the culture and where to go and what to see.
 

Brazil: The Once And Future Country
by Marshall C. Eakin

The Brazil Reader: History, Culture, Politics
by Robert M. Levine

The Brazilian People:
The Formation And Meaning Of Brazil
by Darcy Ribeiro

The Brazilian Puzzle
by David Hess

Brazilian Women
Women In Brazil (Books)

The Brazilians
by Joseph A. Page

It's not surprising that it would take 500-plus pages to define the Brazilians, and Page's definition is as remarkably cogent--given its length--as it is complete, compelling, and insightful. The spotlight in his "search for Brazilianness" illuminates all corners of this vast hemispheric neighbor of ours, achieving a many-angled perspective by drawing from events and traits in Brazilian history, politics, economics, natural history, and culture. His workable, wonderfully presented description of the Brazilian national character incorporates the impact of Portuguese, African, and indigenous Indian influences, the disproportion of wealth in the modern Brazilian state, the abundance of natural resources being squandered by ecological mindlessness, the easy coexistence of Roman Catholicism and African-based religions, and the peculiar personal psychology that leaves Brazilians at once charming and violent. No book substitutes for real experience, but this book runs a close second in terms of affording an understanding of Brazil. --Brad Hooper
 

The Cambridge Encyclopedia
Of Latin America And The Caribbean
edited by Simon Collier, Harold Blakemore
and Thomas E. Skidmore

Carnivals, Rogues, and Heroes
by Roberto Damatta

The Changing Face Of Northeast Brazil
by Kempton Evans Webb
 

City Of Walls: Crime, Segregation
And Citizenship In São Paulo (paperback)

City Of Walls: Crime, Segregation
And Citizenship In São Paulo (hardback)
by Teresa Pires Do Rio Caldeira
 

A Concise History Of Brazil
by Boris Fausto
 

Death Without Weeping:
The Violence Of Everyday Life In Brazil
by Nancy Schepre-Hughes
 

Freedoms Given, Freedoms Won:
Afro-Brazilians In Post-Abolition
São Paulo And Salvador
by Kim D. Butler

Gays & Lesbians In Brazil
Gays In Brazil

History Of A Voyage To The Land Of Brazil
by Jean De Lery

Léry's account of his fascinating and arduous visit to Brazil in 1556 is one of the early classics of New World travel literature.
 

House And Servant: The Domestic
World Of Servants And Masters
In Nineteenth-Century Rio De Janeiro
by Sandra Lauderdale Graham
 

Negotiating National Identity: Immigrants, Minorities,
and the Struggle for Ethnicity in Brazil
by Jeffrey Lesser

Racial Issues
Racial Issues In Brazil (Books)
 

Rio de Janeiro (Writer and the City)
by Ruy Castro

The fifth book in Bloomsbury's the Writer and the City series is no dry travelogue, dutifully reciting the requisite tourist attractions and eating and drinking establishments. Castro (Bossa Nova), a notable Brazilian essayist, meanders through Rio de Janeiro the way a long-time resident might take a visitor through favorite neighborhoods, telling charming anecdotes as they occur to him: a French viscount's lunatic plan to knock down the Sugar Loaf mountain that rises in the midst of Guanabara Bay; the quixotic efforts to move Carnival to the cooler month of June; the playboy Porfirio Rubirosa's loss of his wife in the middle of a dance floor. Historical fables are woven in with an account of contemporary Brazil and a strong dose of the legendary carioca humor. Castro takes us from Amerigo Vespucci's arrival in Brazil in 1502 to the 17th- and 18th-century battles for control of Rio, recounting colonial-era maneuvering with an ear for irony. He also recounts the drug wars and the growth of the hillside favela slums. He conveys Rio's jeito, or indefinable spirit, in a way that no traditional travel book could ever do. --Publishers Weekly

Sex In Brazil
Love, Sex, Sexuality In Brazil (Books)
 

Strangers In The Ethnic Homeland
by Takeyuki Tsuda

Tsuda explores the Japanese-Brazilian return migration with a transnational perspective.
 

Travelers' Tales Brazil
Annette Haddad & Scott Doggett
 

Tristes Tropiques
by Claude Levi-Strauss

Women's Issues
Women In Brazil (Books)
 

Also See:
Biographies      Love & Sexuality      History Of Brazil

Politics Of Brazil     Racial Issues     Religion In Brazil

Santo Daime/Ayahuasca   Spiritism   Women In Brazil

Lampiao: The Bandit King       Books About Canudos

Brazil Book Index