A Discontented Diaspora: Japanese Brazilians and the Meanings of Ethnic Militancy, 1960-1980. JEFFREY LESSER: Durham, N.C.: Duke University Press, 2007.

Abstract

Lesser is the author of Welcoming the Undesirables; Brazil and the Jewish Question (Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994), easily the best book written about Jewish immigrants in Latin America. In it, Lesser argues eloquently that Jews were both desirable and undesirable for Brazil: desirable because they contributed to "whitening" the national population and enhancing a Brazilian brain trust in science and technology, but undesirable because their religious beliefs and practices and socio-ethnic horizons constituted a significant dissonance in terms of the rather carefully managed concepts of a unified Brazilian cultural nationalism.