some emails

Sent: Mon 4/16/2007 9:22 AM
To: sandrinha; nely; sílvia
Subject: minhas amigas brasileiras
Oi! Tudo bom? Eu sei foi tempo tão longe desde eu falei con voces, e desculpame. Estou muito ocupada aqui nos Estados Unidos, mas não esqueci de voces. Espero que voce esteja bem. Como vai? E Desculpe eu não mando isso email a as otras pessoas -- não posso encontrar as emails do Angelica ou Beatriz ou otras.
Com este mensagem es um som de Jean Grae -- eu não sei si voce conhece ela, mas ela e legal. ela e rapper de brooklyn e canta rap con o grupo Little Brother e Justus League. Não tenho tradução das letras, mas ela e legal. tem um myspace: www.myspace.com/jeangrae e sua website e: www.jean-grae.com .
Vou a tentar mandar mais musica das otras um dia.
Beijos,
Janelle


-------------------------------------------------------------


Sent: Tue 11/21/2006 8:39 AM
To: family list
Subject: amor e paz de janelle
Dear Family,

It’s been a while, I know. Apologies for the long absence of news. Thank you for your replies to my earlier email; I’m sorry I haven’t been able to send more personal responses. I’m glad that I can share this little bit with you. I hope you all are doing well. I am currently writing to you from Salvador, which is also in the northeast of Brazil. Salvador is 85% Black, making it one of the Blackest cities outside of Africa. I have been in Salvador for about 3 weeks and will be here for another 2 or so. This time spent here is for my independent study project. I am staying in an apartment with 4 other American students from my program, with a great view of the beach.

My independent study project is about women who participate in hip hop movements here. Here, there are several hip hop cultural movements that are striving to educate and encourage poor, urban, black youth about Afro-Brazilian history and culture and keep kids off the streets and out of crime and off of drugs. They put on hip hop shows, as well as workshops that teach kids how to rap, DJ, breakdance, or graffiti and educate them. So far it’s been a pretty cool experience. The people I’ve met are beautiful and strong.

Black women here are more visible than in Fortaleza. There’s a greater variety of natural styles of hair and education levels and jobs and colors and on and on. You could be or do so much more of almost anything here (not to say that women are doing everything here in large numbers; the traditional isms are still cutting us down and leaving us out, but there is a sense of strength and presence here in certain pockets that I haven’t experienced in Fortaleza and have experienced to a very small extent in the US). Apparently, Salvador and the town Cachoeira (which we visited and is kind of like a more colonial, smaller scale Salvador, sort of. That’s not really a fair description, but I can’t think of a better one right now.) have received a lot of “Roots” tourism from Black folk in the US who come to learn about the Diaspora. Beautiful. That tourism, in turn, helped bolster rights for black people here, because black Americans wanted to see black Brazilians working and living around them, so hotel and restaurant and tour-leading people had to stop being racist and hire some black folk. It’s really beautiful to be here and affirm blackness, seeing people around me in this country with a similar racial history and know that we’re connected and capable and strong. Diasporas are beautiful, and we need to start uniting or affirming our connections over history.

I’d encourage everybody to come here and learn about the various movements here, as well as the religion of Candomblé, the practice of Capoeira, and so many other things that are going on here. Candomblé is an Afro-Brazilian based religion that was persecuted for a long time. It is rooted in Yoruba traditions and when the Portuguese tried to convert the slaves, they used Catholicism as a parallel for Candomblé. Capoeira is a form of dance that had been a form of fighting among the slaves, as it was brought over from countries like Angola. There’s so much more that could be said about these practices; I’m not really doing them justice.

A few weeks ago, we went on our “excursion” to Recife, which is further south of Fortaleza in Pernambuco. Recife was really cool; we immediately liked it more than Fortaleza. We met the women’s group Grupo Mulher Maravilha, which was really inspiring. They’re a 31-year old group who work in their community to raise issues of human rights, especially as they pertain to race and gender (but also of class and sexuality). They’ve done a lot, working with the domestic rights laws to make sure they actually work for the women they address, educating people about their rights and systems of oppression, and giving kids political formation whilst teaching them about different professions. Here in Salvador, we’ve met with the group CEAFRO, which deals with black women’s issues, especially in regards to domestic work. They’re a lot like GMM, only blacker and a little more militant. Also, the education runs differently – the women of CEAFRO are professors and stuff, while that was less likely in GMM. Also, Candomblé has a presence within this group as well, as well as stuff that deals with religious persecution (hence, Candomblé). My advisor for my ISP is a professor that works with CEAFRO, and she knows her stuff.

I’ve been having a good time here with my roommates. I saw the National Cuban ballet here in Salvador two weekends ago – it was really amazing. We go to the beach fairly often. We go out to eat and see hip hop and Capoeira shows every once and a while. We’ve made a few Brazilian and other North American friends. I haven’t gone out too much – honest! – but I’m trying to make the most of what little time I have left.

The food is good here – almost every day I buy acarajé from a vender on the street. Acarajé is like a big hush puppy ball, cut in half, with several different sauces on it. You get a yellow paste (I don’t know what it’s made of), a sauce made with okra, some tomatoes and cucumbers, and optional hot pepper and shrimp. When you get it hot, it’s soooo good. Plus, it only costs about 1-4 R$ (and the Brazilian Real is worth half of a US dollar). There’s also a lot of fried fish and roasted beef. They have fried chicken, but it ain’t like I know and love it. I also dearly miss Mexican food. In Fortaleza, we ate a lot of beans, rice, and pasta, but less so here (I guess because we cook for ourselves or eat out more instead of eating our host families’ food).

So, family, know that things are good with me. I am so blessed to be here, especially as a privileged student (there are a lot of problems here in Brazil, especially with poverty, drugs, and prostitution). I feel so lucky everyday. I am thinking of you and wish I could share more of this beautiful country with you.

I’ll be back in the US around December 20th.

Love,

Janelle



Ps. Attached is a few pictures. The first, as I mentioned, is of the view from my 10th floor apartment in Salvador. There is also one of some of my host family in Fortaleza They were really beautiful and we got along great. The last picture is of a friend and I jumping the sand dunes in Fortaleza – very gritty fun, one of my favorite things we did in Fortaleza. Fortaleza was nice – pretty beaches and I stayed in a great neighborhood, but we were so busy with Portuguese and Culture, Development and Social Justice classes we didn’t do much. Plus, there’s been a lot more to see and do in Salvador, which is more of a culturally vibrant city than Fortaleza, which is basically a touristy beach city.