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Winner of the Casa de las America Prize for Brazilian Literature,
The Story of Rufino reconstructs the lively biography of Rufino
Jose Maria, set against the historical context of Brazil and Africa
in the nineteenth century. The book tells the story of Rufino or
Abuncare, a Yoruba Muslim from the kingdom of Oyo, in present-day
Nigeria. Enslaved as an adolescent by a rival ethnic group, he was
captured by Brazilian slave traders and taken to Brazil as a slave
sometime in the early 1820s. In 1835, after being enslaved in
Salvador and Rio Grande do Sul, Rufino bought his freedom with
money he made as a hired-out slave and perhaps from making Islamic
amulets. He found work in Rio de Janeiro as a cook on a slave ship
bound for Luanda in Angola, despite the trans-Atlantic slave trade
having been illegal in Brazil since 1831. Rufino himself became a
petty slave trader. He made a few voyages before his ship was
captured by the British and taken to Sierra Leone in 1841 for trial
by the Anglo-Brazilian Mixed Commission to determine if it was
equipped for the slave trade, since there were no slaves on board.
During the three months awaiting the court's decision, Rufino lived
among Yoruba Muslims, his people, and attended Quranic and Arabic
classes. He later returned to Sierra Leone as a witness in a court
case and attended classes with Muslim masters for almost two years.
Once back in Brazil, he established himself as a diviner - serving
whites and blacks, free and slaves, Brazilians and Africans, Muslim
and non-Muslims - as well as a spiritual leader, an Alufa, in the
local Afro-Muslim community. In 1853 Rufino was arrested due to
rumors of an imminent African slave revolt. The police used as
evidence for his arrest the large number of Arabic manuscripts in
his possession, the same kind of material the police had found with
Muslim rebels in Bahia thirty years earlier. During his
interrogation, Rufino told his life story, which is used to
reconstruct the world in which he lived under slavery and in
freedom on African shores, aboard slave ships, and in Brazil. An
extraordinary Atlantic history carefully pieced together from the
archives, The Story of Rufino illuminates the complexities of
slavery and freedom in Africa and Brazil and the resilience of
ethnic and religious identities.
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