Sadlier's study of women writers in Portugal after the 1974 revolution is a useful contribution to a neglected European literature, in which women are making a forceful contribution; and it is one of the few sources of such information in English. . . . Works analyzed include the famous Novas Cartas Portuguesas (Lisbon, 1972) by Maria Isabel Barreno, Maria Teresa Horta, and Maria Velho da Costa, Xerazade e os outros (Lisbon, 1964) by Fernanda Botelho, Lidia Jorge's O Dia dos Prodigios (2nd ed., 1980), Helia Correia's Montedemo (Lisbon, 1983), and Teolindo Gersao's O Silencio (1981). These studies are followed by an appendix on the background of women's rights and feminism in Portugal. Although Sadlier has chosen these works because of their common tradition of literary modernism and aesthetic experimentation, her readings are descriptive rather than theoretical and provide an excellent introduction to representative works and themes of major contemporary women writers. Choice Contemporary Portugal offers a fascinating mixture of social revolution, literary experiment, and feminist practice. Since the revolution in 1974, the country has produced a large number of writings by and about women. In fact, for the first time in Portuguese history, there are at least as many women as men writing books. The Question of How: Women Writers and New Portuguese Literature presents an analysis of texts by the Three Marias, Fernanda Botelho, Lidia Jorge, Helia Correia, and Teolinda Gersao. The first book to be written in English on contemporary Portuguese women writers, it investigates what Portuguese literary women have to say about their culture. In addition to showing how specific works of fiction are inflected by gender and ideology, Sadlier also presents a brief historical account of feminism in Portugal. The only book of its kind in the field, The Question of How: Women Writers and the New Portuguese Literature will be of interest to both students and specialists of Hispanic literature, West European studies, Women's studies, literary theory, and criticism.

Tomas Gutierrez Alea's Memories of Underdevelopment (1968) is a classic of Cuban revolutionary culture, and is hailed as a prime example of a radical style of 1960s political filmmaking that became known worldwide as Latin American "new cinema." Darlene J. Sadlier's detailed study approaches this much-written-about film from a new perspective. Her analysis situates the film in its historical context, considering how Cuban political history affected and informed the production of the film, particularly its use of archival footage. She discusses the film as an adaptation of Edmundo Desnoes's novel Memorias del subdesarrollo (1965), exploring how the novel itself is "re-written" in significant ways by the film. Sadlier goes on to analyse the curious opening of the film on an outdoor scene of Afro-Cubans dancing to the "new" music of Pello del Afrokan, arguing that this opening scene prefaces the film's exploration of both class and race. She focuses on the unique style of the film, particularly the use of voiceover, music and documentary footage to show how the themes of ennui, isolation, writing, and remembering are depicted. In doing so, she highlights the film's lasting impact and its role in defining Latin American "new cinema".

Since the late nineteenth century, Brazilians have turned to documentaries to explain their country to themselves and to the world. In a magisterial history covering one hundred years of cinema, Darlene J. Sadlier identifies Brazilians' unique contributions to a diverse genre while exploring how that genre has, in turn, contributed to the making and remaking of Brazil. A Century of Brazilian Documentary Film is a comprehensive tour of feature and short films that have charted the social and political story of modern Brazil. The Amazon appears repeatedly and vividly. Sometimes-as in a prize-winning 1922 feature-the rainforest is a galvanizing site of national pride; at other times, the Amazon has been a focus for land-reform and Indigenous-rights activists. Other key documentary themes include Brazil's swings from democracy to dictatorship, tensions between cosmopolitanism and rurality, and shifting attitudes toward race and gender. Sadlier also provides critical perspectives on aesthetics and media technology, exploring how documentaries inspired dramatic depictions of poverty and migration in the country's Northeast and examining Brazilians' participation in streaming platforms that have suddenly democratized filmmaking.

"Appearing for the first time in English, these stories express the anguish and courage of women from their different classes and regions as they recognize their common restlessness and forge a new consciousness." Booklist

..". provocative... Although not all the pieces are outwardly political, there is a political edge to the book; the tone of the stories is bleak as they tell of Brazilian women s struggles with government, society, men and their own private demons. Sadlier s able translations retain a distinctive voice and style for each writer." Publishers Weekly

"Sadlier... has done a service to students of Comparative Literature and Women s Studies as well as to general readers who sincerely want to know what literature of quality is being written in that all-too-rarely studied Portuguese language of Brazil." Revista de Estudios Hispanicos

"The pieces... convey... the evolution in the consciousness of the writers, their sense of themselves, and their place in society as well as the changes affecting Brazil s political climate and society at large during this century." Review of Contemporary Fiction

"A superb addition to the increasing number of anthologies dedicated to Brazilian literature." Choice

"A must for any modern literary collection." WLW Journal

Women writers have revolutionized Brazilian literature, and this impressive collection will provide English readers with a window on this revolution. These twenty previously untranslated selections by some of Brazil s most important writers illustrate the remarkable power of women s voices and the important contributions they have made to twentieth-century literature."

Cultural diplomacy-"winning hearts and minds" through positive portrayals of the American way of life-is a key element in U.S. foreign policy, although it often takes a backseat to displays of military might. Americans All provides an in-depth, fine-grained study of a particularly successful instance of cultural diplomacy-the Office of the Coordinator of Inter-American Affairs (CIAA), a government agency established by President Franklin D. Roosevelt in 1940 and headed by Nelson A. Rockefeller that worked to promote hemispheric solidarity and combat Axis infiltration and domination by bolstering inter-American cultural ties. Darlene J. Sadlier explores how the CIAA used film, radio, the press, and various educational and high-art activities to convince people in the United States of the importance of good neighbor relations with Latin America, while also persuading Latin Americans that the United States recognized and appreciated the importance of our southern neighbors. She examines the CIAA's working relationship with Hollywood's Motion Picture Society of the Americas; its network and radio productions in North and South America; its sponsoring of Walt Disney, Orson Welles, John Ford, Gregg Toland, and many others who traveled between the United States and Latin America; and its close ties to the newly created Museum of Modern Art, which organized traveling art and photographic exhibits and produced hundreds of 16mm educational films for inter-American audiences; and its influence on the work of scores of artists, libraries, book publishers, and newspapers, as well as public schools, universities, and private organizations.

Long before the concept of "globalization," the Portuguese constructed a vast empire that extended into Africa, India, Brazil, and mid-Atlantic territories, as well as parts of China, Southeast Asia, and Japan. Using this empire as its starting point and spanning seven centuries and four continents, The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora examines literary and artistic works about the ensuing diaspora, or the dispersion of people within the Portuguese-speaking world, resulting from colonization, the slave trade, adventure seeking, religious conversion, political exile, forced labor, war, economic migration, and tourism. Based on a broad array of written and visual materials, including historiography, letters, memoirs, plays, poetry, fiction, cartographic imagery, paintings, photographs, and films, The Portuguese-Speaking Diaspora is the first detailed analysis of the different and sometimes conflicting cultural productions of the imperial diaspora in its heyday and an important context for understanding the more complex and broader-based culture of population travel and displacement from the former colonies to present-day "homelands." The topics that Darlene J. Sadlier discusses include exploration and settlement by the Portuguese in different parts of the empire; the Black Atlantic slave trade; nineteenth-century travel and Orientalist imaginings; the colonial wars; and the return of populations to Portugal following African independence. A wide-ranging study of the art and literature of these and other diasporic movements, this book is a major contribution to the growing field of Lusophone studies.

The first comprehensive cultural history of Brazil to be written in English, Brazil Imagined: 1500 to the Present captures the role of the artistic imaginary in shaping Brazil's national identity. Analyzing representations of Brazil throughout the world, this ambitious survey demonstrates the ways in which life in one of the world's largest nations has been conceived and revised in visual arts, literature, film, and a variety of other media.

Beginning with the first explorations of Brazil by the Portuguese, Darlene J. Sadlier incorporates extensive source material, including paintings, historiographies, letters, poetry, novels, architecture, and mass media to trace the nation's shifting sense of its own history. Topics include the oscillating themes of Edenic and cannibal encounters, Dutch representations of Brazil, regal constructs, the literary imaginary, Modernist utopias, "good neighbor" protocols, and filmmakers' revolutionary and dystopian images of Brazil. A magnificent panoramic study of race, imperialism, natural resources, and other themes in the Brazilian experience, this landmark work is a boon to the field.

Like their Hollywood counterparts, Latin American film and TV melodramas have always been popular and highly profitable. The first of its kind, this anthology engages in a serious study of the aesthetics and cultural implications of Latin American melodramas. Written by some of the major figures in Latin American film scholarship, the studies range across seventy years of movies and television within a transnational context, focusing specifically on the period known as the "Golden Age" of melodrama, the impact of classic melodrama on later forms, and more contemporary forms of melodrama. An introductory essay examines current critical and theoretical debates on melodrama and places the essays within the context of Latin American film and media scholarship. Contributors are Luisela Alvaray, Mariana Baltar, Catherine L. Benamou, Marvin D'Lugo, Paula Felix-Didier, Andres Levinson, Gilberto Perez, Darlene J. Sadlier, Cid Vasconcelos, and Ismail Xavier.

Nelson Pereira dos Santos is the first book in English to provide a full critical discussion of the films of Latin America's most important living director. A leader of the Cinema Novo movement, dos Santos is responsible for some of Brazil's most socially important and artistically engaging movies. Through a discussion of his films, Darlene J. Sadlier chronicles the filmmaker's epic career--his leftist-committed cinema, his concern with the national and the popular, his chameleon style, and his links to canonical Brazilian literature. She charts his moves from neo-realism to Godardian experimentation to a kind of popular realism and includes two highly informative interviews that reveal dos Santos's cultural, intellectual, and philosophical formation.