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 ways that were instructive, affirming, provocative, and occasionally downright maddening, were enough.