> Summer Read with Beth
> Brazilian author
> Setting: Rio de Janeiro, mid to late 19th century
> Characters: Miranda (wealthy man who wants a title and is extremely jealous and competitive with his neighbor, the slumlord, Joao Romao and his wife, Bertoleza; Rita, the sexy Bahian woman,: Jaronimo (gentle giant, Portuguese immigrant who transforms from being culturally Portuguese to being culturally Brazilian) and his wife, Piedade de Jesus)
> cultural issues: Portuguese v. Brazilian, black v. mulatto,music of either culture
> p.2...."He suggested they live together and she gladly agreed because, like all colored women,she wanted to keep away from blacks and instinctively sought a mate of a superior race."....True to this day in Brazil
> p.13...."For two years the slum grew from day to day gaining strength and devouring newcomers. And next door, Miranda grew more and more alarmed and appalled by that brutal and exuberant world, that implacable jungle growing beneath his windows with roots thicker and more treacherous than serpents, undermining everything, threatening to break through the soil in his yard and shake his house to its very foundations."
> Vocabulary: 1)Carioca: a native or resident of Rio de Janeiro
> p.46..."Marry him? I'm not that dumb! God forbid! What for? To be someone's slave? A husband's worse than a devil trying to boss you around. Never! God preserve me! There's nothing like running your own life and taking care of your own business."
> p.61..."That mulatta embodied the mystery, the synthesis of everything he had experienced since his arrival in Brazil. She was the blazing light of midday; the fierce heat of the farm where he had toiled; the pungent scent of clover and vanilla that had made his head spin in the jungle; the palm tree, proud and virginal, unbending before its fellow plants., She was poison and sugar. She was the sapotikla fruit, sweeter than honey, and sumac, whose fiery juice burned through his skin. She was a green snake, a slithering lizard, a mosquito that for years had buzzed around his body, stirring his desires, quickening energies dulled by longing for his homeland, piercing his veins to rouse his blood with a spark of southern love, of music that was a long sigh of pleasure, a larva from the swarm of bright green flies that flitted around Rita Bhiana and shimmered in the air with aphrodisiac phosphorescence."......love this
> p.76...."...the more he adopted Brazilian ways, the more acute his sense became and the more his body weakened."
> p.95..."He saw himself straddling the globe trying to clasp it with his short legs, with a crown on his head and a scepter in his hand."...how male!
> p.115 or so...Pombinha's sexual awakening....lovemaking with the cocotte and then getting her period....well written
> p.121..."...only when she had felt the blood of womanhood stir within her, was she capable of seeing those violent torments poets adorn with the name of love."
> "cat-heads" v. "silver jennies"...the two slums which were each others' foes
> Pombinha had become as skilled as Leonie at their trade: her ill-fated intelligence, born and bred in Sao Romao;s humble muck, throve amid the richer slime of more spectacular vices>' as a whore
> I found the ending, Bertoleza's death, really upsetting, particularly the betrayal by Sao Romao!
> LibraryThing Review: The novel, "The Slum" provides a 19th century glimpse of Brazilian society via the misadventures of the founder and residents of a slum. Somehow Azevedo is able to convey a myriad of social tensions across multiple levels and he does so with incredible vividness, wonderful prose, and memorable characters. The reader is immersed in the tension between Portuguese immigrants and Brazilians, between mulattoes and blacks, between men and women, between upper and lower classes resulting in a rather head-spinning sensation. Azevedo's descriptions are at times disturbing and always revealing. At the end, I felt like I had just returned from a journey into a new culture which left me changed forever!
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