cover image Samba Dreamers

Samba Dreamers

Kathleen de Azevedo, . . Univ. of Arizona, $17.95 (304pp) ISBN 978-0-8165-2490-7

De Azevedo's vibrant but self-conscious debut novel depicts Brazilians struggling to make a life in 1970s Los Angeles, a story shot through with saudade , Portuguese for intense longing or homesickness. Fleeing political oppression, Joe Silva arrives in L.A. in 1975 and finds work with Hollywood Celebrity Tours, posing as Cuban Ricky Ricardo while carting tourists around Beverly Hills. In counterpoint to Joe, Rosea is second-generation and has learned to loathe all things American. Just released from jail, where she did time for burning down her anthropologist ex-husband's house, Rosea is angry and unpredictable. She is also the daughter of actress Carmen Socorro, a character modeled on Carmen Miranda; much of Rosea's rage springs from the way in which the movie industry created and then devoured her mother. Joe marries blonde, blue-eyed waitress Sherri, but falls into a doomed affair with Rosea after she takes a job at the tour company. Though the plot scales melodramatic heights and de Azevedo indulges in predictable metaphors to describe familiar immigrant dilemmas ("Joe felt his Brazilianness drift away like a green coconut bobbing out to sea"), the author creates a world through the strange intersection of Hollywood fantasy and real-world cultural exchange. (Mar. 9)