Epilogue: The Study of Identity and Culture

Let me begin with a short story. Joaquim Maria Machado de Assis (1839-1908) is one of the most important authors of Brazilian literature of all times. He was a journalist, playwriter, novelist, and also an important public servant. Machado de Assis was also a mulatto (Figure 26.1). His grandparents were freed slaves. His father, a painter and decorator, married a Portuguese woman migrated from the Azores. Machado’s family lived as “aggregates” of the rich Barroso Pereira family in the outskirts of Rio de Janeiro. Machado de Assis managed to learn Portuguese, French and Latin as a very young self-taught person. He wrote his first poem and his first theatre critical reviews at 15. To understand the exceptionality of Machado de Assis’ life, one must consider that slavery has been officially abolished in Brazil only in1888. The first timid legal changes began to occur in 1850, when Machado de Assis was just 11. The city of Rio de Janeiro, at that time, was populated by a complex mixture of people, including white free citizens, liberated slaves, mulattos and black slaves.