Chica Da Silva: A Brazilian Slave Of The Eighteenth Century

Description

Júnia Ferreira Furtado offers a fascinating study of the world of a freed woman of color in a small Brazilian town where itinerant merchants, former slaves, Portuguese administrators and concubines interact across social and cultural lines. The child of an African slave and a Brazilian military nobleman of Portuguese descent, Chica da Silva won her freedom using social and matrimonial strategies. But her story is not merely the personal history of a woman, or the social history of a colonial Brazilian town. Rather, it provides a historical perspective on the cultural universe she inhabited, and the myths that were created around her in subsequent centuries, as Chica de Silva came to symbolize both an example of racial democracy and the stereotype of licentiousness and sensuality always attributed to the black or mulatta female in the Brazilian popular imagination. Cover Half title Series title Title Copyright Epigraph Contents Acknowledgments Preface Slavery and Manumission in Minas Maps Introduction to the English Edition Slaves and Former Slaves 1 | Land of Stars The Diamantine Demarcation The Village of Tejuco 2 | Chica da Silva Slave, Mulatta Ancestry 3 | The Diamond Contractors The Old Sergeant Major The Young Chief Judge 4 | Black Diamond Profane Love Donna Francisca 5 | The Lady of Tejuco The House and the Street Slave Ownership 6 | Life in the Village Social Networks Brotherhoods 7 | Mines of Splendor The Patron Macaubas 8 | Separation The House in Lapa The Diamond Contract 9 | Disputes The Grijo Estate The Marian Era 10 | Destinies The Donna of Serro do Frio Descendants 11 | Chica-que-manda Historical Memory Spreading the Myth Abbreviations 1 | Archives and Libraries 2 | Document Collections Suggested Reading Index Plate section