Americanos: representaões da identidade nacional no Brasil e nos EUA. LÚCIA LIPPI OLIVEIRA: Belo Horizonte: Editora da Universidade Federal de Minas Gerais, 2000.

Abstract

Lúcia Lippi Oliveira's Americanos follows in a long tradition of Brazilian soundings of the United States, a tradition that goes back to Eduardo Prado's A ilusão americana (1893) and Vianna Moog's Bandeirantes e pioneiros (1954).Americanos brings this tradition into the present day and, as its subtitle suggests, into the fashionable, if somewhat formless, intellectual territory of "representations" and "national identity." The latter innovation notwithstanding, the book hews close to the conventions of the genre; for example, like most, but not all of its predecessors, Americanos is directed at Oliveira's countrywomen and countrymen, that is, at brasileiros. The result is an interesting, if uneven, collection of articles, essays, and assorted musings on Brazilian and North American intellectual life, on the national mythologies of Brazil and the United States, and on contemporary culture and society in each of the two countries.