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Jose Murilo
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Jose Murilo
The Black President Before Obama
The sweeping Obama phenomenon has caught Brazil, and it comes as no surprise in the country with the world’s largest population of African descendants. Blogs are commenting on all things Obama, from his stand on ethanol to the ‘rumors‘ of his appraisal of Brazil’s free software policies. An especially notable thread is the one reporting on the resurgence of a weirdly interesting 1928 Brazilian sci-fi novel — ‘The Black President’ — that predicted a US election matching a black, a feminist, and a conservative candidate in the then remote year of 2228.
The author, Monteiro Lobato, is very famous in Brazil for his tales for children and teens. The set of books ‘Yellow Woodpecker Ranch‘ was turned into popular TV series that reigned supreme on Brazilian tubes through 5 different remakes — the first in 1952, and most recently in 2001. But, in this case, the book is an obscure and rare incursion of Lobato into adult science fiction. The resurgence of interest in it now is totally connected with what stands out as an incredible intuitive guesswork on what has come to be our present situation, but 80 years ago (!) almost unimaginable.
Most of the Brazilian readers of Monteiro Lobato (1882-1948) know him for the episodes of the ‘Yellow Woodpecker Ranch’ series, and few are acquainted with his ‘adult piece’… Originally published in 1926 as a ‘feuilleton‘ in the newspaper ‘A Manhã’, (but then titled as “The Clash of Races”, which today stands as the subtitle), “The Black President” is a doubly curious book: first for being a science fiction piece, an uncommon genre among Brazilian writers, and second because the plot anticipates the current scientific and intellectual debate during the first decades of the 20th century.
Monteiro Lobato’s Black President – ALPHARRÁBIO – por Viegas Fernandes da Costa-
Carl Youngblood
I don’t think you should be too hard on Lobato for his eugenicist tendencies. The eugenics movement was basically accepted as good and enlightened by most well-informed people of the time, and many eugenicist policies continued in the US well into the 60s.
For an interesting article about the eugenics movement, see this:
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Joe Perez
I also posted a blog on this book, suggesting its link in vision-logic cognition…
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José Murilo
Really proud that this post at Global Voices got linked by Andrew Sullivan. Daily Dish rocks!
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thais lips zenthon
The Black President – Sci-fi in the Fashion of H. G. Wells and Jules Verne
Written in 1926 by the famous Brazilian writer Monteiro Lobato – A black man running for the presidency of the US against a feminist woman in the year 2228.
PR Log (Press Release) ‚Äì Jan 07, 2010 ‚Äì Tha√Øs Lips Zenthon, http://www.translationsdecoder.com, has just signed a contract for translation into English and copyrights of “The Black President” in the US market.
This novel is not a hymn for the sake of racial purity, but a metaphor of segregation and acculturation, a story that tells how the black community is driven to assuming the ethnical values of the whites.
More about the book can be read at its blog http://lobatoblackpresident.blogspot.com/2010/01/sci-fi- … and at http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/O_Presidente_Negro.
Thaïs Zenthon is looking for the best publisher to release what can already be considered a best-seller.
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