front cover of Unremembering Me
Unremembering Me
Luiz Ruffato
Tagus Press, 2018
Inspired by his own family's struggles, as well as the broader sociopolitical and economic forces that shaped Brazil in the 1970s, Luiz Ruffato's epistolary novel, Unremembering Me, traces the story of the narrator's older brother. Leaving behind his parents and younger siblings in order to assume financial responsibility for his family, Célio, a young factory hand from Cataguases, Minas Gerais, goes to work in industrial São Paulo. His letters home convey details about his work, living situation, adjustments to urban life, and fierce homesickness, even as they point to growing political unrest under the military dictatorship and Célio's increasing participation as a union organizer.
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front cover of Utopias Of Otherness
Utopias Of Otherness
Nationhood And Subjectivity In Portugal And Brazil
Fernando Arenas
University of Minnesota Press, 2003
Forges a new understanding of how these two Lusophone nations are connected. The closely entwined histories of Portugal and Brazil remain key references for understanding developments--past and present--in either country. Accordingly, Fernando Arenas considers Portugal and Brazil in relation to one another in this exploration of changing definitions of nationhood, subjectivity, and utopias in both cultures. Examining the two nations' shared language and histories as well as their cultural, social, and political points of divergence, Arenas pursues these definitive changes through the realms of literature, intellectual thought, popular culture, and political discourse. Both Brazil and Portugal are subject to the economic, political, and cultural forces of postmodern globalization. Arenas analyzes responses to these trends in contemporary writers including José Saramago, Caio Fernando Abreu, Maria Isabel Barreno, Vergílio Ferreira, Clarice Lispector, and Maria Gabriela Llansol. Ultimately, Utopias of Otherness shows how these writers have redefined the concept of nationhood, not only through their investment in utopian or emancipatory causes such as Marxist revolution, women's liberation, or sexual revolution, but also by shifting their attention to alternative modes of conceiving the ethical and political realms. Fernando Arenas is associate professor in the Department of Spanish and Portuguese Studies at the University of Minnesota. He is coeditor (with Susan Canty Quinlan) of Lusosex (2002).
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