{"id":48430,"date":"2016-07-27T16:59:17","date_gmt":"2016-07-27T16:59:17","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.mixedracestudies.org\/?p=48430"},"modified":"2016-07-28T00:21:45","modified_gmt":"2016-07-28T00:21:45","slug":"g-reginald-daniel-machado-de-assis-multiracial-identity-and-the-brazilian-novelist-university-park-pa-pennsylvania-state-university-press-2012-pp-xi-338-74-95-hb-gledson-review","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/?p=48430","title":{"rendered":"G. Reginald Daniel, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), pp. xi + 338, \\$74.95, hb. [Gledson Review]"},"content":{"rendered":"

G. Reginald Daniel, Machado de Assis:\u00a0<\/strong>Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist\u00a0<\/strong>(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State\u00a0University Press, 2012), pp. xi + 338, \\$74.95, hb. [Gledson Review]<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n

Journal of Latin American Studies<\/a>
\nVolume 47 \/ Issue 03 \/ August 2015<\/a>
\npages 607-608
\nDOI: 10.1017\/S0022216X15000528<\/a><\/p>\n

John Gledson<\/strong><\/a>, Emeritus Professor of Brazilian Studies
\nUniversity of Liverpool<\/em><\/p>\n

G. Reginald Daniel, Machado de Assis: Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist<\/em><\/a> (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2012), pp. xi + 338, \\$74.95, hb.<\/strong><\/p>\n

Increasingly, over the last 10 or 20 years, critics have taken an interest in Machado de\u00a0Assis\u2019s<\/a> racial origins, and in the effect they may have had on his career, his opinions\u00a0and his writings. We know that he was the child of a father described as \u2018pardo, forro\u2019,\u00a0and a Portuguese mother, from the Azores<\/a>. In 2007, Eduardo de Assis Duarte published his Machado de Assis afrodescendente<\/em>, which documents most of the references\u00a0to the matter, and more generally to slavery and its effects, in the works, novels, stories\u00a0cr\u00f4nicas<\/em>, and so on.<\/p>\n

It is a complex topic: we have little or no unambiguous evidence of what this most\u00a0ironic and secretive writer thought about the colour of his skin, though we can have\u00a0little doubt that he would have smiled with a certain amount of bitterness (and who\u00a0knows, some perverse satisfaction) at the description of his colour as \u2018branco\u2019 on his\u00a0death certificate.<\/p>\n

G. Reginald Daniel\u2019s<\/a> book is certainly the longest treatment of the subject, and\u00a0perhaps the most comprehensive. A great deal is given over to discussions of the contexts, historical and theoretical, which surround it. The first chapter deals with the\u00a0history of miscegenation<\/a> in Brazil since 1500, the second with other mulatto<\/a> writers\u00a0before Machado and contemporary with him (Caldas Barbosa<\/a>, Lu\u00eds Gama<\/a>, Jos\u00e9 do\u00a0Patroc\u00ednio<\/a>, Lima Barreto<\/a>); in the third Machado\u2019s life is recounted in some detail. It\u00a0is a faithful account, though with some mistakes. Machado did not translate Oliver\u00a0Twist<\/em><\/a> from English, as Jean-Michel Massa proved, nor is it necessarily true that he\u00a0suffered from epilepsy<\/a> all his life. The first of two stories entitled \u2018Mariana\u2019 is twice\u00a0given the date 1864, instead of 1871 (the year of the Law of the Free Womb<\/a>). There\u00a0is no series of cr\u00f4nicas<\/a> entitled Cr\u00f4nicas do relojoeiro<\/em> signed \u2018Policarpo\u2019. Jos\u00e9 Galante\u00a0de Sousa\u2019s Bibliografia de Machado de Assis<\/em> is, astonishingly, missing from the very extensive bibliography. Some important and relatively unknown facts, however, are there, like\u00a0Gon\u00e7alves Crespo\u2019s<\/a> 1871 hesitant letter saying he has heard he is an \u2018homem de cor\u2019.\u00a0Large parts of the later chapters are given over to accounts of other writers (Gra\u00e7a\u00a0Aranha<\/a>, for instance, and Euclides da Cunha<\/a>) and other issues which sometimes have no\u00a0real connection to Machado (negritude<\/a>, for instance)…<\/p>\n

Read or purchase the review here<\/a>.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

G. Reginald Daniel, Machado de Assis:\u00a0Multiracial Identity and the Brazilian Novelist\u00a0(University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State\u00a0University Press, 2012), pp. xi + 338, \\$74.95, hb. [Gledson Review] Journal of Latin American Studies Volume 47 \/ Issue 03 \/ August 2015 pages 607-608 DOI: 10.1017\/S0022216X15000528 John Gledson, Emeritus Professor of Brazilian Studies University of Liverpool G. Reginald Daniel, […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[12,5,83,21,1196,8],"tags":[142,3781,24603,1479,8304],"class_list":["post-48430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-articles","category-book-reviews","category-brazil","category-latincarib","category-literary-criticism","category-media-archive","tag-g-reginald-daniel","tag-joaquim-maria-machado-de-assis","tag-john-gledson","tag-journal-of-latin-american-studies","tag-machado-de-assis"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48430","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=48430"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48430\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":48449,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/48430\/revisions\/48449"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=48430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=48430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mixedracestudies.org\/wp\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=48430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}