Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

White Skin, Black Slavery: Bernardo Guimarães’s A escrava Isaura and the Global Telenovela

2017; University of Texas Press; Volume: 35; Linguagem: Inglês

10.7560/slapc3508

2157-2941

Raquel Kennon,

Migration, Ethnicity, and Economy

This article presents a comparative analysis of A escrava Isaura, the Brazilian romance written by Bernardo Guimarães, published in 1875, and the eponymous popular telenovela launched more than one hundred years later in 1976–1977, in the context of abolitionist discourses about slavery in Brazil, the role of gender, and the sexual vulnerability of enslaved women. Moreover, it interrogates the global popularity of the telenovela and explores the complex reasons for the popularity of this antislavery narrative, specifically the story of the “almost white” enslaved woman Isaura.