O Brasil no Sul da Flórida: Subjetividade, identidade e memória by Valéria Barbosa de Magalhães (review)

Choosing the right time to bring a book to light is a critical issue for an author. If Valéria Barbosa de Magalhães had published O Brasil no Sul da Flórida: Subjetividade, identidade e memória [Brazil in South Florida: Subjectivity, Identity, and Memory] in 2006, right after finishing the dissertation from which it derives, it would probably have received its deserved recognition as a strong, seminal work on Brazilian immigration abroad that used oral history methods. Indeed, her pioneering work is echoed in a number of subsequent writings on related subjects, thanks to articles and papers published in the course of her research. However, we would have been deprived of a much more mature and thoughtful work, one that benefits tremendously from reflections on the theme and on the approach the author chose for this outstanding contribution.

Released in 2011, this book offers us a more refined, nuanced work, exposing a critical shift that both accompanied the transition from dissertation to book and occurred in the author’s career: Magalhães does not consider oral history as the self-serving theme of oral history. For her, oral history method functions to serve her themes, instead of appearing as a research instrument to be commented on endlessly, at times even blurring the individual voices of the interviewees and the analytical competence of the researcher. At the same time, we face a historically situated picture, in the sense that many political, social, economic, and cultural changes took place since her research was completed. The author warns us that the 2008 economic crisis in the United States dramatically changed both the numbers and features of Brazilian immigration, and, although she does not pursue this analysis, her observation opens pathways to future comparative approaches in the study of successive waves of immigration.

Between 2002 and 2005, Valéria Magalhães conducted dozens of interviews with Brazilian immigrants in South Florida, both during a one-year period throughout which her personal and professional life mingled (as she recounts in the opening chapter, A história do projeto [“The History of the Project”]) and in two subsequent shorter trips. The author provides a rich and detailed portrait of her fieldwork, acclimating the reader to the culture of Miami-Dade and Brower counties, as well as to daily life in South Florida, including her own adaptation process in a foreign land, which itself serves as a source of data. Immersed in an affective community (a concept adapted from Maurice Halbwachs), Magalhães clearly demonstrates that it is possible to engage in close relationships with her interviewees and yet retain an independent, critical scholarly stance. She was able to understand the demands and life circumstances of each of her narrators (the lesbians and gays who asked for anonymity, the escort girl whose afternoon interview was interrupted by three client visits and many phone calls), as well as to problematize the conditions of life of her narrators.

Drawing mainly on oral history models provided by Daphne Patai’s influential book Brazilian Women Speak: Contemporary Life Stories (New Brunswick and London: Rutgers University Press, 1988) and the groundbreaking work of Ecléa Bosi in Memória e sociedade: Lembranças de velhos [Memory and Society: Elderly Recollections] (São Paulo: T. A. Queiroz, 1979), Magalhães opens windows onto a number of theoretical and conceptual issues in oral history and immigration studies, displaying a vital cosmopolitan perspective. It is the concept of subjectivity, however, that remains at the core of the book: as an individual-based feature forged within social and cultural patterns, it helps the author to pursue the thesis that Brazilian immigration to South Florida is not driven primarily by economic considerations, even if that is how statistical studies and other qualitative research methods often present it. Magalhães...