Isabel C. R. Ferreira

"Racial Democracy" in Literary Works: African-american and Afro-brazilian Perspectives Isabel C. R. Ferreira

This book investigates the way in which African- American and Afro-Brazilian prose fictions perceive and critique the concept of ?racial democracy? in Brazil. African-Americans view Brazil as a paradise to escape segregation and violence in the 1920s since Brazilian government exports this idea about the country. In the 1960s and 1970s, there is a change in their perspective as some African-Americans visit Brazil. They realize and question racial harmony as they conclude it is a veiled racism and disillusionment. Some Afro-Brazilian writers, at first, portrait Afro-Brazilian characters as oppressed and marginalized, but they are not fully aware of that since there has never been any institutionalized segregation. Later, in the 1960s and 1970s, Afro- Brazilians' movements flourish, influenced by American's movement, bringing self-awareness and a sense of identity to deconstruct the "myth of racial democracy."