Rosea spoke, her voice steady. “I was in jail a long time, you know. I’m paying for my sins. Now I live in a dingy apartment. I get to watch my neighbors’ kids play and have a normal life that I’ll never have. I smell their barbecues. I’m already in hell, believe me.” Joe turned to go back to the car. “You don’t know what hell is. You have no idea.” When José Francisco Verguerio Silva arrives at LAX, fleeing the brutal dictatorship in his native Brazil, he is determined to become Americanized at all costs. He lands a job driving a Hollywood tour bus and posing as Ricky Ricardo. He marries a blonde waitress and becomes the father of twins. Yet happiness remains elusive for Joe as he is haunted by flashbacks of prison torture. And soon a torrid affair with Rosea Socorro Katz, the crazed daughter of Hollywood’s Brazilian star Carmen Socorro, proves to be even more dangerous than the life he has fled. Rosea spent her childhood watching her mother unravel as the celebrity system toyed with and eventually destroyed her career. Carmen had always claimed to be descended from Amazons, the woman warriors of legend, but she was tamed by Hollywood. Not Rosea. She has just finished serving jail time for setting fire to the home of her ex-husband—in an attempt to destroy his collection of Brazilian artifacts—and sets out to salvage her life. Along the way, she manages to tear down the lives of everyone she meets. The Brazil of the imagination is shattered in this novel of two tortured souls wrestling with the myths of movies, politics, and the American Dream. Laced with fantastic tales of bird-boys and cannibal rituals, it spins a compelling story of desperation as it reminds us that American freedom and the myth of unbridled opportunity can also consume and destroy.
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From Publishers Weekly
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)
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Copyright © Reed Business Information, a division of Reed Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
Review
“A dark, fantastical and, indeed, brilliant cautionary tale for those who search out paradise without first confronting—and defeating—their inner demons.” —El Paso Times "Kathleen de Azevedo's debut novel is both a realistic portrayal of the difficulties immigrants have in adapting to a new country and a Hollywood fantasy about the American dream." —Women's Review of Books
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Most Helpful Customer Reviews
4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Brazil in Heart and Mind, and in the Funny Bone,
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This review is from: Samba Dreamers (Camino del Sol, A Latina and Latino Literary Series) (Paperback)
Samba Dreamers is compelling, imaginative, and fabulous reading! Brazil, the idea, finds passionate range in this fast-paced story told by a deft spinner of fantastic tales about love and dreams in Hollywood. De Azevedo's intelligence and humor are both in evidence as she takes on stereotypes about everything from Hollywood success to the Carmen Miranda biography to Amazonian lore, and brings us a wild slate of engaging characters.
Birdboy is the misfit hybrid whose bird-plus-boy body graphically illustrates all the ways that bodies and selves don't always fit very well into what life has in store. Rosea Socorro Katz is a knockout character, so believable and so larger-than-life at the same time, a contemporary Amazon in not-exactly-comfortable clothing, the wanna-be lover with the heart of gold and killer instincts. Joe Silva is a Brazilian transplant who won't try to fill stereotypical Latin lover shoes, but he does wear a Ricky Ricardo costume for work, and de Azevedo draws the tensions of his coexisting Brazilian/US identities with sympathy and humor. So many things in this novel are occasions for laughter: The naming of the twins (Keffy and Jeffy) after tv show puppets because the names sound "American." The Hollywood homes tour business and its lies and gullible tourists, probably closer to truths than fiction. The funny but perfectly imagined artifices that bring all the novel's characters into relationship. And so many things in the novel are inspired: the chapter-heading glosses of anthropological journals about Amazons and cannibalism; the dark complexities of Joe's relationship with Brazil; De Azevedo's smiling and insightful exploration into the challenges of being alive for all her characters, for all of us. Highly recommended reading!
3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
Refugee trades demons of Brazil for those of Hollywood,
By
This review is from: Samba Dreamers (Camino del Sol, A Latina and Latino Literary Series) (Paperback)
"Samba Dreamers" is a dark, fantastical and, indeed, brilliant cautionary tale for those who search out paradise without first confronting -- and defeating -- their inner demons. If Nathanael West had been Brazilian, "The Day of the Locust" would have looked a lot like "Samba Dreamers." De Azevedo is a remarkable new literary voice. [The full review first appeared in the El Paso Times.]
1 of 1 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
This Book Could Make a Great Movie!,
By Nels Johann (San Francisco, CA) - See all my reviews
This review is from: Samba Dreamers (Camino del Sol, A Latina and Latino Literary Series) (Paperback)
Samba Dreamers is an amazing book, a sociological tour de force, and a fun read. Two young Brazilians in Hollywood are in the midst of a torrid illicit affair. They break all the rules including big time felony. He's a fugitive from Brazil's dictatorship of the 70's and she's the daughter of famed Brazilian movie star Carmen Socorro (read Carmen Miranda). Caught up, used and misused by the Hollywood power structure, they long for the sensuous rhythms and relaxed tropical warmth of Brazil. Ms. De Azevedo deftly balances a keen and adventurous insight into Hollywood with a sincere sympathy for her native Brazilian culture. This book is bound to become a great Hollywood exposé movie in the tradition of such classics as "Sunset Boulevard" and "Day of the Locust". For now it's a must read!
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