Falling in Love with Bahia & Brazil: On Negritude, Saudade, & Surrender
Naomi Jackson reflects on her own intellectual and cultural journey, finding affirmation in Afro-Brazilian culture, and a new dimension to her love and fascination for the stories of Black people.
I have been trying actively to stave off a case of Brazil-o-philia since the early 2000s when I lived in pre-gentrification Brooklyn. Preventive care for me looked like resisting the allure of capoeira classes, which offered the promise of instant friendship and community, endless references to obscure terminology, a pet name (as a West Indian, it’s hard for me to resist affectionate teasing and nicknames), and a warrior physique. Determined to keep my hot foot off Brazilian soil, I cut short conversations with friends who traveled to Brazil and caught Luso-fever. I thought that the Caribbean, West Africa, and South Africa, where I’d traveled in search of Blackness that both reflected and diverged from my own in w