Acarajé diaries. Day 6
Here, people aren’t born, says Lázaro, my tourist guide. They come up on stage. They don’t die, they have a curtain call. The paulistas in the group find this comment very amusing. But Lázaro looks like he knows what he’s talking about. He’s a painter, and our driver is a ballet dancer. We are […]
Acarajé diaries. Day 5
The storm comes from the sea. It’s like a curtain of fog. The Pestana is the first to go. Then, 5 minutes later, the Ondina Apart is covered. That’s when the rooftops go insane. Five kids carry on playing basketball in a communal field, blinking aquatically. Three others stand on a bus stop bench, […]
Acarajé diaries. Day 0
A couple of days before flying to Salvador on a research trip, I received a call from my brother. He was in Almada, a city located in the southern margin of the river Tagus, near Lisbon. He had found a bahiana do acarajé named Carolina Brito selling in a park, and wanted to tell me […]
Did you know? Food and Brazilian assertions of Africanness
In October 1972, Brazilian foreign minister Gibson Barbosa went on a month-long trip to nine West African countries in order to develop closer economic and political relations with black Africa. In Ghana in particular, Gibson Barbosa had to endure hostile reactions to Brazil’s ties with Portugal, a country ruled at the time by […]
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