People going to Brazil frequently ask us what they should read and what movies they should watch to prepare for their trip. We have compiled a reading/viewing list related to Bahia, which can prepare you for a trip or just help you understand the culture and conditions
If you have read a great book or seen a great movie and would like us to consider adding it to the list, please email us the information!
You can also download this list in PDF, if you’d like to print or share it.
Movies
Central Station, 1998. He was looking for the father he never knew. She was looking for a second
chance. An emotive journey of a former school teacher, who write letters for illiterate people, and a young boy, whose mother has just died, in search for the father he never knew.
Cronicamente Inviavel, (Chronically Unviable) 2000. Dissection of Brazilian problems, using six people who meet in a restaurant in São Paulo as models to illustrate political and sociological theses.
City of God, 2002. Fight and you’ll never survive… Run and you’ll never escape. Two boys growing up in a violent neighborhood of Rio de Janeiro take different paths: one becomes a photographer, the other a drug
dealer.
Favela Rising, 2005. Their music fueled a movement. His message fought a war. A man emerges from the slums of Rio to lead the nonviolent cultural movement known as Afro-reggae.
Orfeu Negro (Black Orpheus), 1959. A retelling of the Orpheus and Eurydice myth, set during the time of the Carnaval in Rio de Janeiro.
Books
Fiction
Jorge Amado is a Brazilian writer whose works deal largely with the poor urban black and mulatto communities of
Bahia.
War of the Saints. Amado, Jorge. Jorge Amado, from Bahia, beautifully captured the mysticism
and fun of Salvador in this book in which a religious statue comes to life (and at one point runs near
Bahia Street’s present day location!)
Tieta. Amado, Jorge. Tieta is the story of a rich and powerful widow of from São Paolo who
returns to Agreste after 26 years. She needs to call upon her past to save the town’s beaches from
developments.
Non-fiction
Arons, Nicholas. Waiting for Rain. University of Arizona Press, 2004.
Freire, Paulo. Pedagogy of the Oppressed. New York: Continuum, 1986.
Hanchard, Micheal. Racial Politics in Contemporary Brazil. Durham and London: Duke University Press, 1999.
Harrison-Brose, Phyllis A. Behaving Brazilian: A Comparison of Brazilian and North American Social Behavior. Newbury House Publishers, 1983.
Landes, Ruth. City of Women. New York: Macmillan, 1947.
Perkins, John. Confessions of an Economic Hit Man. San Francisco: Berrett-Koehler Publishers Inc, 1945. (Not about Brazil directly, but informative on kinds of international politics that affect Brazil.)
Reis, João Jose. Slave Rebellion in Brazil: The Muslim Uprising of 1835 in Bahia. Baltimore: John Hopkins University Press, 1993.
Scheper-Hughes, Nancy. Death Without Weeping. Berkeley and Los Angeles: University of California Press, 1992.
