Customer Reviews (3)

An in-depth discussion of Brazillian science fiction and what it has to tell us about Brazilian culture
Brazilian Science Fiction: Cultural Myths And Nationhood In The Land Of The Future is an in-depth discussion of Brazillian science fiction and what it has to tell us about Brazilian culture and society by Professor of Portuguese and Brazilian literature M. Elizabeth Ginway. Chapters examine the cross-narrative icons of the robot, the alien, the spaceship, and the wasteland; dystopian science fiction; reflections on the changing roles of women; and influences of the post-dictatorship Brazilian generation and its delvings into "hard" SF, cyberpunk, alien encounters, alternate histories and parallel universes, and more. Black-and-white photographs of science fiction book covers illustrate this thoughtful and thorough examination which is especially recommended for academic library literary studies collections.

It has the potential to change the way we see 3rd world SF
Ginway has been in Brazil several times since 2000 in preparation for this book, and she has read more Brazilian SF than most Brazilian readers.

Ginway is a "Brazilianist," a scholar of Brazilian history and culture, and in her remarkable book she employs techniques of cultural criticism to explore what some 50 years of local science fiction has to say about Brazil's cultural myths in relation to technology and modernization in that country, most of it ocurred during and troubled by a military dictatorship (1964-1985). Ecofeminist theory is among her approaches, along with Gary K. Wolfe's technique of symbol reading present in his book "The Known and the Unknown: The Iconography of Science Fiction." A certain comparative stance arises when she contrasts Brazilian myths embedded in Brazilian SF, with American myths present in American SF.

Ginway refrains from making literary criticism--judgements on literary values and accomplishments regarding the works she analises.

The book was called "fascinating" by Charles N. Brown, the editor of "Locus--The Newspaper of the Science Fiction and Fantasy Field," which has included Ginways study in its recommended list for 2005 (making it elegible for the Locus Award for best non-fiction book).

Let me say that *Brazilian Science Fiction* transcends its subject in the way that its attentive reading may reveal a device that would allow one to understand how other Third World of even Eastern Europe science fictions are much closer to their cultures than it was once supposed. One would need, of course, to have a strong familiarity and understanding of that culture in order to see how even the most comomplace SF icons--such as the robot, the starship, the alien--can be revealing of the heart and soul of that culture, even when its science fiction seems to be superficially imitative of Anglo-American SF.

A book that can work as a telescope to makes us see global SF in quite a different way.

The Dreams of The Sleeping Giant
This is a book to keep and read every once in a while, just to make sure that there are people in Brazil who produce good literary SF.

From the early works of the XIX Century to the Cyberpunk and Alternate History of the new millenium, Ginway built a very clever and well researched book about the few writers who dare to write about the future and the space in a country where the past is still present.

How to tame a land, how to built its destiny if the high technology is for a few? How to imagine and elaborate the growth of a Nation if our people is still chained by analphabetism? How to be a Portuguese spoken country and, at the same time, wish for the stars?

Yes, there is a Brazilian Science Fiction. And is plural, original, strong and juicy. Sometimes it's even very good. Most of the times.

You definetly must try it. ... Read more

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This volume is comprised of the manuscripts of four lectures delivered by noted Brazilian scholars Gouvea Octvio de Bulhoes, Carleton Sprague Smith, Stanley J. Stein, and Charles Wagley at Vanderbilt University in 1959-1960. ... Read more

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Originally the preserve of Afro-Brazilian slaves, the marginalized and the underclasses in Brazilian society, capoeira is now a mainstream sport, taught in Brazilian schools and practised by a range of social classes around the world. Some advocates now seek Olympic recognition for Capoeira.
This apparent change in the meaning and purpose of Capeoira has led to conflicts between traditionalists, who view capoeira as their heritage descended from the maroons, a weapon to be used against the injustice and repression; and reformers, who wish to see Capoeira develop as an international sport.
Capoeira: The History of Afro-Brazilian Martial Art explores Capoeira as a field of confrontation where the different struggles that divide Brazilian society are played out.It contains both the first comprehensive English language review of archive and contemporary literature relating to Capoeira, as well as the first scholarly account of Capoeira's history and development. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (5)

Comprehensive
Very comprehensive review of the history of capoeira. The book's strong point is its thoroughness in covering the cultural/social/political contexts in which capoeira developed in different parts of Brazil. I must disagree w/ the reviewer Dr. Ifatunmibi's point that the author is, "only using written accounts of Capoeira to validate his views." I found that the author was meticulous in his references to the many oral historical accounts of capoeira, and cites his own oral interviews w/ Mestres, etc. that he completed in conducting his primary research. And despite the fact that the author does draw some conclusions from his research, I do believe he presents a fairly balanced view of the written/oral documentation of the antecedents of Capoeira and the broad spectrum of opinion, from whether Capoeira is a purely African art form transported intact to Brazil, or is a purely Brazilian art form. The book has a few weak points: it needs a good proofreading - I found many typos, items missing from the index, sentences that are difficult to understand and words that seem out of place. Also the way the text is organized leads to some chronological "jumping around" that's sometimes difficult to follow, and to some redundancies.

Too costly
I think a better deal is the books by Nestor Capoeria and those by Gerald Taylor.They both have 'game vision'and mandinga and malicia , which is really based on years in the roda.

Elitist
The problem with this book is that He is only using written accounts of Capoeira to validate his views.Many other reviewers mistakenly regard this as "scholarly".It down plays any other perspective about the history, origin, or practice of Capoeira as "questionable" because it was not written about at a certain time.

The problem with this attitude is that it leaves Capoeira's definition in the hands of the white slave owners of Brasil who were writing about it.It neglects the fact that just because someone did not write about something it did not happen.Capoeira's origins, as the author acknowledges is from Angola.These people were followers of oral learning not written learning.It is elitist to suggest that the writing (especially when written by outsiders who were also bias slave holders) is more valuable than the oral traditions.

Capoeira is African.And most of Africa is oral in traditions of learning and recording...thus it is only fair to acknowlege these oral legacies over the outsiders written response to a martial art he did not understand or respect.

a model for other martial art books

I've been reading martial art books for the past sixteen years, and this has to be one of the best.As a practitioner and an academic I have to say this is a welcome addition to any martial arts library whether or not you practice capoeira.This is an extremely well researched, well-footnoted book by a professional historian who has the requisite language and archival skills needed to do justice to the topic.It also traces the historiography of the art, i.e. it critically and convincingly addresses what other scholars have written about capoeira in English and Portuguese.
The price is an issue, and it is well known that books published by Routledge are outrageously expensive (which is why many authors try to publish elsewhere).But if you are serious about capoeira, or need to know how martial art books should be written, then spend the 50$.Although 224 pages doesn't sound like much, this is a book packed with information that has serious implications for thinking about how capoeira history has been appropriated as a political activity.For instructors of capoeira I would advise them to buy this book before they say anything more to their students about capoeira hitsory.

Fascinating history of the art...
Matthias Röhrig Assunção draws on historical fact to propose a view of Capoeira's development as a martial art.Through research, and much like many of us, through objective interpretation he ascertains what is reality, and what is fiction.Furthermore, he relates the common myths surrounding Capoeira to the people who need them, and proposes that at times myths are exactly what inspires individuals.He is, however, an advocate of fact, truth, and reality; and this shows in his work.

The book is by far the most in depth work on Capoeira written in English to date. (To the best of my knowledge)It's perspective is born of inquisition rather then the "gospel truth" word of mouth tradition so common in Capoeira circles.
Bravo !!!I am sincerely touched now that this book has been published, for I myself have been attempting various essays regarding some of the topics explored here.I am glad that the perspective came from a source so well educated, and through such a large spectrum of information.I have received educated reason to back many opinions I have had to date.

Salve,
Instrutor LoboGuara (Associacao Cordao de Contas do Canada)
Paul Bielak and David M. Cvet ... Read more

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Flash and Crash Days: Brazilian Theater in the Post-Dictatorship Period deals with the theater produced in Brazil during the 1980s and 1990s, especially postmodernist directors, women playwrights, and theater companies. It attempts to answer the following questions: Did the thriving stage of the 1950s and 60s wither during the reign of terror in the early 1970s, unleashed in the wake of the 1968 state of siege declared by the generals? Did the return to civilian government fail to create conditions for a new theater? A cursory glance at what little U.S. commentary on Brazilian theater has appeared in recent years could well lead one to answer all of the above questions in the affirmative. Scholars beyond Brazil's borders appear to have bonded with those individuals and companies which contested and then fell victim to repression in the 1960s and 1970s. So pervasive is this scholarly trend that a vacuum, an empty stage has been created. There seems to be an unstated assumption that theater in Brazil thrives only under repression and dictatorship. It is an illusory vacuum. Flash and Crash Days examines how the absence of censorship, on the one hand, and the exigencies of protest and ideological purity on the other, have given rise to a variety of theatrical modes which Brazil has never experienced in the past, allowing all voices the opportunity to be heard in the marketplace of artistic ideas: women's perspectives, particularly those expressed by playwrights; sexual identity, including gender construction and gay perspectives; psychological issues; the individual in society; religion; formal experimentation ... Read more

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Where was Brazil in the so-called "Latin American" literary Boom?Third World Literary Fortunes posits a response contrasting the figures of Jorge Amado, "vulgar" but uniquely successful in turning Brazilian popular energies into literature, and Joo Guimares Rosa, "Brazil's Joyce." The Brazilian establishment expected Rosa would win the Nobel Prize.Abroad Rosa remains utterly obscure. Piers Armstrong probes the gulf between the Brazilian intelligentsia's perception of the world and the world's perceptions of Brazil - in which the Brazilian elite is essentially invisible.The result is a cultural mapping of the relative power of four great rhetorical currents: literary Brazil; popular artistic expressions of identity dominated by Rio and Bahia; the representation by white social anthropologists of Brazilian popular culture as being unique by virtue of its (their) blackness; finally, the dissonance between Brazilian literature and the supposedly continental dimensions of the Spanish American writers apotheosized in the Boom as the poetic priests of Latin American alterity.

Third World Literary Fortunesintroduces the reader to the life and work of five of Brazil's greatest writers,including (apart from Rosa and Amado):the country's other "greatest" writer, the extraordinarily subtle and psychologically acute Machado de Assis, a mulatto who, though a witness to slavery completely effaced his own racial identity from his work; its best poet, Carlos Drummond de Andrade, one of the great twentieth century portraitists of urban bourgeois mediocrity; and the seminal Renaissance man of Brazilian modernism, Mrio de Andrade.The book examines their respective domestic and international receptions, discerning a clear pattern of international irrelevance with the exception of the black sheep, Jorge Amado - the only major Brazilian writer who celebrated negritude.

The enormous differences between the other writers lead Armstrong to the conclusion that the common point determining international failure is the absence of the one marketologically apt rhetoric of identity, the "Carmen Miranda syndrome" - the cultural aura of coastal and urban Afro-Brazilian and the sexual mystique of the mulatta, present in Amado's work but also in the brilliant speculative socioanthropology of Gilberto Freyre,Rio's carnaval and in the current explosion of cultural tourism to Bahia. ... Read more

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Faced with an aging workforce, Japanese firms are hiring foreign workers in ever-increasing numbers. In 1990 Japan's government began encouraging the migration of Nikkeijin-overseas Japanese-who are presumed to assimilate more easily than are foreign nationals without a Japanese connection. More than 250,000 Nikkeijin, mainly from Brazil, now work in Japan.

The interactions between Nikkeijin and natives, says Joshua Hotaka Roth, play a significant role in the emergence of an increasingly multicultural Japan. He uses the experiences of Japanese Brazilians in Japan to illuminate the racial, cultural, linguistic, and other criteria groups use to distinguish themselves from one another. Roth's analysis is enriched by on-site observations at festivals, in factories, and in community centers, as well as by interviews with workers, managers, employment brokers, and government officials.

Considered both "essentially Japanese" and "foreign," nikkeijin benefit from preferential immigration policy, yet face economic and political strictures that marginalize them socially and deny them membership in local communities. Although the literature on immigration tends to blame native blue-collar workers for tense relations with migrants, Roth makes a compelling case for a more complex definition of the relationships among class, nativism, and foreign labor. Brokered Homeland is enlivened by Roth's own experience: in Japan, he came to think of himself as nikkeijin, rather than as Japanese-American. ... Read more

Customer Reviews (4)

A very thoroughly researched, well written book
The topic of Japanese Brazilian migrants in Japan is one that very few people outside of Japan or Brazil know about. I'm glad to see that there was a book written about this issue, especially since it involves the complexity of race vs. ethnicity and issues dealing with feelings of isolation, sense of belonging and cultural acceptance, something which we all strive for. Mr. Hotaka Roth did an excellent job of researching the experiences of these migrant workers and presented them in a very honest way. You could tell that he dove into this project fullheartedly by the fact that he made an effort to not only learn Japanese and about Japanese culture, but that he also learned Portuguese and the different nuances of Brazilian culture. Unlike a lot of research books, this book was not dry and did not drag on forever. It was quick paced and easy to read and understand. It keeps the reader interested and each chapter presents itself with new themes.

Good overview of today's "multiethnic" Japan
Here is a short, simple book examining the role and place of the ever-growing Japanese-Brazilian population in Japan. Overall, it is a well written piece of work that I found helpful in my reseach. Although it is not the most comprehensive book on Japan's new ethnic minoritiy population,the Brazilians, Roth's work is worthwhile nonetheless.

Dekaseki
It's a very good book, good analysis of Nikkei life in Japan.

I read this book and I found that it was more than a simple academic book withstatistics, and numbers...It's arealy good view of what is a migrant life in Japan .

A view of a changing Japan
In Japan, a country that is thought to be "ethnically pure", the new phenomenon of return migration poses an interesting problem.Nikkei (those who are of Japanese ancestry outside of Japan) Brazilian nationals began migrating to Japan for economic reasons in the 1990s (the government made it particularly easy for them to enter the country, assuming they would adapt to Japanese culture better than those with no ties to the country), and many decided to stay, creating minority enclaves with a culture distinctly their own and NOT Japanese. Joshua Hotaka Roth provides an analysis of Nikkei life in Japan.

Although I read this book as part of a research project, I found that it was much, much more than a dry academic book with lots of statistics (although there certainly were plenty of statistics for anyone looking for solid numerical data).Roth didn't just write about this subject; he experienced it: he worked in a factory side by side with Nikkei Brazilians, lived and associated with Nikkei, and truly participated in his subjects' way of life in Japan.The result is an intimate view of the "return" migrant's experience, including sections on the actual factory work, injury and health insurance issues, and some ways in which Brazilian Nikkei in Japan maintain Brazilian identities while adapting to Japan.

This book is great for anyone who wants to know more about Japan in this time of internationalization, anyone who is interested in international migration, issues of national identity, or anyone who just wants an interesting non-fiction read. ... Read more

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This comprehensive book traces the full arc of U.S.-Brazilian bilateral relations over time. Despite the common critique of U.S. neglect of Brazil, Britta Crandall convincingly shows that the relationship has been marked by mutual, ongoing policy engagement. To be sure, different relative power positions and foreign policy traditions have limited high-level bilateral engagement. However, Crandall argues convincingly that the diminishing power disparity between the United States and Brazil is leading to closer ties in the twenty-first centurya trend that will bring about growing cooperation as well as competition in the future. ... Read more

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Role of Brazilian Military in Politics and Society
McCann shows a great deal of understanding through his work and extensive research of the Braziliam Army, as well as other topics Latin American. He has been a Professor at the University Of New Hampshire for many years, and has opened the eyes of many eager students in search of L. American history. Uses a clear writing style, and is a must read for any enthusiastic scholar interested in learning more about the vast country of Brazil and its distinct military history. ... Read more

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Capoeira’s unique blend of martial art, dance, and thrilling sport has made it an increasingly popular activity worldwide. But its origins have been shrouded in mystery and its complex history not well understood. For volume two of his Unknown Capoeira series, Mestre Ricardo Cachorro has done extensive archival research to shed light on these shadowy areas. Reaching back as far as the year 1415, Cachorro documents the cultures and individuals that gave birth to—and helped alter and redefine— capoeira. He uncovers its beginnings in the dramatic saga of the Akindele family, who lived in a storied Yoruba kingdom in pre-Colonial Africa, and in the vibrant culture of newly explored Bahia de Todos os Santos in 1531. Cachorro continues his investigation with the Feitorias and Capitanias—the legendary sugarcane mills of the seventeenth century—an important but little-known cradle of capoeira. He explores the historical and cultural aspects of each significant period of the discipline’s development from ancient Africa to present-day Brazil, in the process profiling its key contemporary players and answering such longstanding questions as why capoeira did not emerge in other enslaved countries of the New World.