American Dream, Jeitinho Brasileiro: On the Crossroads of Cultural Identities in Brazilian-American Literature

The Brazilian cartoonist Henfil lived in the United States between 1973 and 1975. In 1983 he published Diário De Um Cucaracha (Diary of a Cucaracha), which was a collection of some of the letters that he had written to his friends during these years. While telling his personal experiences in his Diário , Henfil reveals his impressions of his host society, and often uses them to establish a comparison with his native Brazil. His reflections, filled with political and economic commentary, range from simple factual descriptions to serious cultural analysis. In both cases, the US becomes a mirror from which Brazil is either praised or criticized, and Brazil provides the perspective for his examination of North American culture. In A Travessia Americana (The American Crossing), Carlos Eduardo Novaes says that ‘Our country is always the reference. Whether we want it or not, we all travel with Brazil in our suitcases’ (17). Henfil's letters are evidence that Novaes is right. He traveled throughout the US and Canada with his friend Paulo Perdigão for thirty-eight days in 1983. A Travessia Americana is a report of their experiences during that trip. Novaes‘s book, therefore, is a travel narrative. Like Henfil's Diário , Novaes's crônicas analyze US society with a lot of humor and a pinch of irony. Every now and then Novaes also turns his gaze to Brazil, although not as emphatically as Henfil does. Both works are registers of an intercultural encounter that would be intensified after the 1980s, when Brazilian immigration to the US would take on much larger proportions. According to Christopher Mitchell, Brazilian immigration to the US started ‘almost abruptly in the mid-1980s’ and Teresa Sales agrees. New York City, for example, home to many Brazilians nowadays, had few Brazilians at that time. As Henfil reports in his Diário , at the end of 1973: There are few Brazilians. There must be many on 46th Street, where there are some stores where they speak Brazilian Portuguese that are meant only to assist Brazilians. But the Brazilians that come here leave after they go shopping. There are few (Brazilians) residing here. And they don't form a ghetto. (120) Bernadete Beserra points out that until the end of the 1980s, when the Brazilian press started exploring the topic, ‘Brazilian emigration was an unusual and almost unthinkable occurrence’.

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