The Vigorous Core of Our Nationality. STANLEY E. BLAKE: University OF Pittsburgh Press, 2011

Abstract

That Brazilian regional identities are racially charged is a truism. From naming practices in cuisine to the possibility of requesting a gaúcha at a brothel, elite and popular understandings of these identities belie the idea of a coherent “Brazilian race.” Until recently, however, English-language scholarship that hoped to interrogate this idea tended to project São Paulo and/or Rio de Janeiro conceptions of race onto the rest of the country or focus solely on ideas of blackness or Afro-Brazilianness. Studies of immigrants and their descendants who did not fit neatly into the classic black-white dyad helped to complicate these narratives, but regional approaches were still unexplored.