
Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia
Patricia de Santana Pinho
Pinho explores how Bahian cultural production influences and is influenced by black diasporic cultures and the idealization of Africa—to the extent that Bahia draws African American tourists wanting to learn about their heritage. Analyzing the conceptions of blackness produced by the blocos afro, she describes how Africa is re-inscribed on the body through clothes, hairstyles, and jewelry; once demeaned, blackness is reclaimed as a source of beauty and pride. Turning to the body’s interior, Pinho explains that the myth of Mama Africa implies that black appearances have corresponding black essences. Musical and dance abilities are seen as naturally belonging to black people, and these traits are often believed to be transmitted by blood. Pinho argues that such essentialized ideas of blackness render black culture increasingly vulnerable to exploitation by the state and commercial interests. She contends that the myth of Mama Africa, while informing oppositional black identities, overlaps with a constraining notion of Bahianness promoted by the government and the tourist industry.
Product Details
About Patricia de Santana Pinho
Reviews for Mama Africa: Reinventing Blackness in Bahia
John Norvell
American Anthropologist
“In this provocative work, the author clearly stands for a new black political culture that dares to go beyond the notions of blackness and whiteness. . . . The excellent work of Pinho vividly demonstrates that meanings of blackness and whiteness should be examined both in local and global contexts. . . .”
Stefania Capone
A Contracorriente
“Pinho favors detailed and measured presentation of an idea, term or argument, followed by an equally in-depth and careful critique. Her book is a breath of fresh air. . . .”
Säer Maty Bâ
Cultural Studies Review
“This book makes an important, sophisticated, and bold contribution and is especially apt for scholars of the social construction of race/ethnicity/nation.”
Stanley R. Bailey
Contemporary Sociology
“This translation of Patricia Pinho's Mama Africa is a timely and welcome addition to the scholarship on racial identity in Brazil and will be useful as an English-language teaching resource in courses about Brazil, race, and the Atlantic World. . . . [T]his is a sharp study and an able translation that should hold an important place in the tools available for helping students outside Brazil understand that country's fascinating politics of racial identity.”
Jerry Dávila
EIAL