This interview continues my Soy/Somos conversations with Latinos and others in the US with their feet planted in two or more cultures. This is who I am. This is who we are.
Ines, I love sitting outside on your porch and being dry and looking at the rain today surrounded on three sides by your vegetable garden... and by giant sunflowers. This is beautiful!
Ines, do you remember how we met?
Oh yes! In a classroom at the Writing Institute at Sarah Lawrence College. I think it was my very first writing workshop—I'd begun to write my first novel, very intimidating at the time. There were eight of us… people who became very important in our lives.
We were nurturing our babies, novels mostly. I was the only memoirist. It was a vulnerable, wonderful time.
You and I gave birth to our books almost in the same year. We took off and also began new careers.
WORDS
"Brazil" - Is Brazil a Latin American country?
YES! We are! we are a part of Latin America. We are the largest nation in South America and way bigger than Mexico.
"Latino" - Are you Latina?
Yes!
Are you Hispanic?
No. I am not a native Spanish speaker. Brazil was colonized by Portugal. I was raised in Portuguese!
Ines, today we have an opportunity to say a few things about the powerhouse that is Brazil and to give voice to you, a Brazilian novelist, a teacher and translator, living in the United States. What are you up to right now?
I'm about to leave for Turin on a grant from Columbia University. It's a translation collaboration with an Italian partner, part of my thesis at Columbia where I just completed my MFA in fiction and literary translation. When I return to New York in October, I will resume my teaching jobs at the Writing Institute, at the Westport Writers Center and the Bronxville Adult School.
A very full plate, Ines!
Now let's travel back in time. Where in Brazil did you grow up?
I grew up a typical, big city, only-child childhood In São Paulo, surrounded by a very big extended family, very Latin American. My parents still live there.
São Paulo is the most populous city in Brazil and in all of South America. The big megalopolis has about 21 million people. It's diverse, very much like New York City with many different accents. It has a large Japanese population, immigration that began in the early 1800s and into the 20th century. I grew up with Japanese food as something very ordinary. Italians are another huge cultural community in Brazil. The number of Italian surnames in a São Paulo phonebook is ridiculous.
Brazil has 203 million people in an area very similar to the US.
When did these immigrants arrive?
This is an ugly part of our history, but true. African slavery was not abolished in Brazil until 1888. This was in the era of large coffee farms in the south and west of Brazil. The farmland was owned by very few people who had tremendous power. How were they going to substitute this workforce? Instead of saying, let's hire our former slaves and pay them, the former slaves were left on the street. The population of Brazil was felt to be "too dark," and the country invited Japanese and European farmers to work its land.
The south of Brazil today is whiter because of the mass of people who came mostly in the early 20th century. Italians quickly moved into the cities and developed much of the industry, especially in terms of food and textiles. They are an influential community in São Paulo. Even our accent in Portuguese has a different rhythm, a kind of Italian intonation. Not generally known, another very large community in São Paulo is the Syrian-Lebanese community.
Ines, tell me about your schooling. What languages did you learn?
I went to a small private school in my own neighborhood until I was 17. We started learning foreign languages in middle school. At the time, our second language was French. I fell in love with French. I can still repeat the dialogue from the books. At the end of middle school, before I went to high school, the curriculum changed, and the second language became English.
It didn't matter to me which language I was learning. I was curious about sounds. How do you imitate those sounds? When you immerse yourself in another language you become a different person.
Did you learn Spanish in Brazil?
Spanish was non-existent in Brazil until about 25 years ago. It started to gain some traction after the forming of MERCOSUR with our neighboring countries in 1991. This is a common market—similar to the European Union. Now proper Spanish is very important for business.
After high school, I made the insane decision to go to law school. In Brazil you go to law school directly from high school. I have no talent to be a lawyer! So, I switched to journalism, the closest to a writing career. When I finished my BA, I started working for a daily newspaper, then briefly for Marie Claire magazine. I worked a few years in public radio, which I loved.
I'd started learning Italian in college and fell deeply in love with the language and the culture; I dreamt of living in Italy. So, I took a sabbatical, a two-year immersion program in Peruggia, Umbria. When I returned to Brazil and my work, I was devastated. I had fallen so deeply into Italy.
Then why the United States?
I met my future husband. He's Irish based in the United States, and his job had sent him to São Paulo for three years. We lived together, I got pregnant, and two months after that he was pulled back to the US.
I was 33 and old enough, but moving to a different country when six months pregnant was crazy. A friend he knew from Ireland helped us find a place in New Jersey. Suddenly, I had a house and a garden in the suburbs!
I was such a city girl and pregnant. Three months later my daughter was born.
Did you feel foreign at first here in the United States?
Though my Brazilian accent was pretty obvious, I didn't feel like I was being treated differently. There were some things about food and culture to adjust to. In Brazil we hug and kiss on both cheeks. Not here in the US.
Something I learned from my husband. People don't need to be kind. They just say what they have to say. Dry. It was a shock to get used to that. Even in business in Brazil, when you say hello to someone you spend five minutes saying how are you, hello, hello... until you get to the point. Here in the United States, you don't need to go "doododoo doododoo." It's a waste of time!
My husband for example talks to his family then he says, "bye" and shuts down the phone.
"Aren't you going to say, I missed you?"
"They know I miss them."
This all has echoes for me in Panama where human relations are more gracious and slow.
Another thing. In Brazil, privacy is something that doesn't exist. You ask totally indiscrete questions to any person you meet. "Why don't you and your husband have kids?" No one gets offended. Now I've become more American, and I find Brazilians very entrones. Too much! "Nosy."
I like to ask the people I interview, what do you find meaningful about the US?
There are many things. People say the US is a land of opportunity. It's true. It is much easier than in most other places. There is a certain freedom of movement in your personal life. One example is how colleges are set up. This is different from Europe and Brazil. In Brazil, in college—let's say you want to do journalism—you are not going to get out of a journalism school and go to work at a bank. You choose your career and that is your path. You need qualifications, licenses, etcetera, etcetera. I love the idea that here people can go to college with time to decide what they want to do and experiment with different subjects. I went to college when I was 17 and made all the wrong decisions.
People are very creative in Brazil, but there is less room for them to turn their creative pursuits into work. There is way more room here. Americans like innovation. Differently from Europe, they're more flexible. They're not as tied to old patterns and traditions.
There is also the immigrant part—once you leave the world in which you grew up and arrive in a new place, even if forced by circumstance, you naturally become something else.
When I lived in Italy for those two years—more like a foreign student; it was not an immigrant experience—I was on my own. Like a blank canvas. When I returned to Brazil everything was the same as when I left. The experience was a confrontation with the other side, and going back was terrible.
A blank canvas. Or an open door. That's what it feels like to me.
When you return to Brazil to help your family or to vacation, what does it feel like to be back?
There are two sides to this story. When I return, I am this person who's always been there. The way you talk—Brazilians relate very easily to people. One of the things very difficult to adjust to is sense of humor. I love to laugh and make jokes. In the US I find it so hard. The jokes don't talk beween languages and cultures. When I go to Brazil, I am funny!
I also have some behaviors that are not Brazilian anymore. You have the activating mode, but you also have changed. I am not the same person who left at 33.
I am not sure it's because we are writers, but when I go back to my native home, I am both inside and outside. I am looking at the society from a certain distance. These multiple perspectives are true for many Americans. Sometimes they are difficult for people in the midst of it, but I think, in the end, it’s a great gift we’ve been given.
I did some light research about Brazilian immigrants in the US. There was an economic downturn in Brazil in 2012. Between 2010 and 2019 the Brazilian immigrant population in the US almost doubled. The count in 2019 was 502,000 people. I believe the sizable communities live in the New York and Boston metropolitan areas, in Los Angeles, in parts of Florida.
Brazilians come to the United States and reproduce the social divide we have back home in Brazil. One of the biggest problems in Brazil right now is the gap between rich and poor that is getting bigger. You have the upper middle and middle classes, scientists, engineers, business people who come to the US to manage Brazilian companies. I have the impression that people who are very well educated seek better opportunities abroad. Then there are people who come mostly illegally and find jobs as cleaners, construction workers, gardeners, or go to work in Brazilian businesses. I wouldn't call it an "underworld," but it's a special plane that operates isolated from the larger American world we live in.
Many Brazilians emigrated thirty years ago when the economy in Brazil was crumbling. As with other Latin American communities, you start to see the children of these immigrants getting a college education and moving into every field.
Do Brazilian and Portuguese immigrants mix with the Spanish-speaking communities here?
I think not that much, but I am not one hundred percent. Here in Westchester, just North of New York City, we have a very international community. Couples from different nationalities and of mixed nationalities like me. People from Africa, Asia, Europe, many Spanish speaking Latin Americans, many Brazilians. This place attracts foreigners.
I think this is why I feel so at home.
From Mexico all the way down to Argentina, you take away Suriname, Haiti, Aruba, and a few others—and of course Brazil—and everyone speaks Spanish. This is a huge bond. I know many Colombians here, and I know there are some parties just for Colombians. There is a broader Latin American connection. Arrives one Brazilian and you automatically turn to English!
Ines, sadly, I've never been to Brazil. Not yet. What is the most typical music heard in Brazil today? I know, of course, that it's a huge country with different regions and traditions.
That's such a tough question! Brazilian music is crazily rich. It depends a lot on the region. Here we have country music: In New York we rarely hear it. In a place like Tennessee, we do—to make a rough parallel.
In Brazil sertanejo is similar to country music. There is samba, frevo, forró, axé, bossa nova, so many ramificatons of Brazilian music. There is something called MPB that stands for Música Popular Brasileira. It's a big umbrella that includes a little bit of samba—not the percussion-heavy samba of carnaval—but samba cançâo, a softer samba often performed with an acoustic guitar. There are also artists who mix a lot of influences. Because music is so important in Brazil, our best poets live in music.
Who is a musician you consider a poet?
Caetano Veloso. He is a god. I was listening to him just before you arrived today, listening to the album that he recorded when he was exiled for two years during the dictatorship of two decades. Caetano lived in London during his exile. There is a longing for Bahia in these songs, the region he's from. There are songs in English, too. The songs are universal, not bound to time. In a hundred years people are going to listen and say, "this guy is our Shakespeare."
What's the name of the album?
Transa. It's very old. You can find it on Spotify. I love Caetano's music. I also love what he has to say. He believes Brazil one day will recognize the beauty in all its people and all that we share.
In the beginning of this conversation, we were talking about Brazil a hundred and fifty years ago when the country tried to whiten its population. This is who we are: A mix of immigrants—Asian, European, and Middle Eastern, descendants of Africans brought as slaves over 300 years, and the indigenous population. This soup of cultures and the huge influences of Africa and indigenous people make Brazil what it is. The rules, the nice, the beautiful were always dictated by European patterns, but we are not Europe.
I was in Senegal recently, working on a project. I felt so at home in an African country. Brazil is influenced by the colors of Africa, the food, our relationship to music, the tons of words that we speak of African origin, even family ties. I think any Brazilian would feel at home in Africa.
I was the kid from a family of immigrants. I always lived in this very white environment and can also feel at home in Europe. Many people still do not accept the beauty of the mixture that we are.
BOOKS
Ines, we both write and read incessantly. We must leave this conversation with a mini assessment of a few books that we are mad about. What are yours?
That’s such a hard question for you and me! I was very impressed by a book I read at the beginning of the year. I admire the way it’s structured and its powerful voice: Divide Me By Zero, by Lara Vapnyar. Like us, the author writes in English, her second language. She was born and raised in Russia and has been living in New York for many years.
Also, I recently read a short novel called Lacci by Neapolitan writer Domenico Starnone. (Some of his books are translated into English by Jhumpa Lahiri, including this one.) In English it's called Ties. It’s a sharp, poignant family story that mi ha colpito, it just hit me, as we would say in Italian.
About 6 months ago I read a wonderfully odd book by the Polish writer Olga Tokarczuk, Drive Your Plow Over the Bones of the Dead. She is a Nobel Prize winner, and this is the second book of hers that I've read. It is both a thriller and a profound meditation on our relationship to the natural world. This one is on my forever shelf.
Why don't we mention Clarice Lispector, the Ukrainian-born Brazilian writer that you recommended to me years ago.
Read her Complete Stories (translated by Katrina Dodson and edited by Benjamin Moser). Moser wrote her biography. It’s also worth reading, as her personality is almost as fascinating as her stories: Why This World: A Biography of Clarice Lispector.
Then we have our own books set in our native Latin American countries.
Ah, yes:
Obrigada, Ines!
For more about Ines Rodrigues, here is her website.
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I hope you enjoyed this longer than usual post. As always this is a conversation. Did anything surprise you? Let me know what moved you.
I so enjoyed and learned from this interview. Will send it to my Brazilian American friend.
Wonderful article. What if you could go back in time when our ancestors made these harrowing voyages with complete families. Wow