Becoming Brazilians poses a familiar and seemingly simple question: How, over the course of the twentieth century, did so many Brazilians come to feel that they belonged to a national community defined by racial and cultural mixture, or mestiçagem? Eakin provides a novel, complex answer by harnessing the power of a vast interdisciplinary field as part of a generous conversation with Brazilian and Brazilianist colleagues, producing an impressively panoramic—while detailed and nuanced—view of the cultural, social, political, and communicational forces that brought mestiçagem to the forefront of Brazilian national identity in the twentieth century's early decades and led to the decline of that ideal by century's end. Eakin usefully notes that mestiçagem does not necessarily imply “racial democracy,” which allows him to explain how and why mestiçagem remains such a powerful cornerstone of Brazilian identity, even among Brazilians who recognize the need to redress racism.
Becoming Brazilians meditates on...
