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meryemelnejefi's review
challenging
informative
reflective
medium-paced
3.5
This was a great story, with really interesting well developed characters, with a fascinating window into Brasilian life and race, or a particular Brasilian life. However the writing style made reading the text quite difficult. It's a "consciousness stream" style of narrative that didn't really work for me.
However, the story was great, and would still recommend.
However, the story was great, and would still recommend.
vogueworld's review
challenging
dark
hopeful
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
3.5
brenommk's review
challenging
emotional
informative
reflective
slow-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? Character
- Strong character development? Yes
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.5
alliereads_'s review against another edition
Just way too heady and difficult for me to follow. I was very interested in the content, just not the structure.
laurapk's review
5.0
I was starting to resent the sturdiness of my mediocrity, my inability, despite years of activism, to have created a single enlightened, salvational idea, a single idea that was truly transformational, starting to see that I'd been spinning around the necessary-obvious, basically treading water.
A complicated book to read, but a very rewarding one, Phenotypes (originally Brown and Yellow) discusses racial issues, social justice and activism in Brazil...but it's about so much more than that. Even though the environment is not entirely familiar, there are sadly so many elements we recognize from our own society. Politicians only create commissions in order to demonstrate to our anesthetized society they are taking some sort of action whenever the anesthetized society decides to rouse itself and apply some pressure of its own.
The story has two timelines: 1) the present (~2016) when Federico (a white-passing biracial man), the main character, an activist in a commission discussing racial quotas in the university, is called home after the arrest of his niece (his brother's daughter) at a protest. His niece was carrying at the time of her arrest an old, non-working pistol which had been used to commit a murder in 1984, a gun which her father (not white-passing) had long ago hidden for a friend in his home. 2) We then travel to that day in 1984 when the crime took place, but we're starting at the end of that fateful day, going back in time and then advancing toward the events again. The current back and forth can be a bit disorientating but it's rewarding.
Federico is a flawed but very likeable character, one whose hurt you genuinely feel. His white complexion had kept him safe and isolated him. I don't want to feel black just because I've learned to say I'm black, like a parrot, I want to really understand. Throughout the story he is confronted with the new generation of activists, one who, he can tell, is disappointed with his actions. At the same time though, he is baffled by their actions. (...)when they take action it's the action of ripping the scalp off an enemy's head and displaying it on the internet for all the world to see, no matter the consequences, capturing virtual trophies and displaying them in their rankings, in the virtual clubhouse, accumulating like the value of which most people of our generation can barely recognize.
On the surface, Federico's ability to effortlessly infiltrate in the white crowd may appear selfish, cowardly; he may even be a bit vain. However, it's hard not to understand why he may want to disappear in a sea of whiteness; in the middle of that fateful day in 1984, we watch him be evaluated for the army and experience with him, the ruthless humiliation of a racist despicable sergeant who is allowed to humiliate black recruits for what feels like hours--that is until one of the recruits turns around and knocks him out with a single great punch to the face. For a second we feel exhilarated, rewarded even. Until, a few scenes later, we come back to the black man who threw the punch: the crying (...) revealed not his bravery but his despair, the despair of someone my own age who knew he'd ruined his life, ruined his whole life by not allowing himself to be humiliated.
It's a book about an adrift character in his 50s (You collect noise, every new noise you encounter you drag it over and add it to the rest, so certain that accumulating all that noise will somehow be fuel for your escape, but it doesn't work. ), trying to understand if there is one acceptable way forward for his society ( Anger never turns into solace).
The book griped me slowly, but gripped me it did. The translator's word was also very illuminating, as he discussed the difficulties of translating a book in a particular Portuguese dialect (Brazilian), in a particular Brazilian dialect (Porto Alegre), in a particular individual dialect (what linguists call an idiolect, i.e. the use of language that's unique to the individual). The author's note made a great point at clarifying that "racial discourses are [not] the same everywhere, that they [do not] map tidily onto one another--in language or lived experience--nor that the same things are likely to cause offence. Rather [this book] represents as best it can one experience's specificities, and works on an assumption that our sometimes dogmatic attitudes to singular, simplified, acceptable discurses are in fact culturally and historically contingent, and that mine--or yours--might eve benefit from a challenge by other realities elsewhere, the more individual, the more personal, the more particular, the better.
A complicated book to read, but a very rewarding one, Phenotypes (originally Brown and Yellow) discusses racial issues, social justice and activism in Brazil...but it's about so much more than that. Even though the environment is not entirely familiar, there are sadly so many elements we recognize from our own society. Politicians only create commissions in order to demonstrate to our anesthetized society they are taking some sort of action whenever the anesthetized society decides to rouse itself and apply some pressure of its own.
The story has two timelines: 1) the present (~2016) when Federico (a white-passing biracial man), the main character, an activist in a commission discussing racial quotas in the university, is called home after the arrest of his niece (his brother's daughter) at a protest. His niece was carrying at the time of her arrest an old, non-working pistol which had been used to commit a murder in 1984, a gun which her father (not white-passing) had long ago hidden for a friend in his home. 2) We then travel to that day in 1984 when the crime took place, but we're starting at the end of that fateful day, going back in time and then advancing toward the events again. The current back and forth can be a bit disorientating but it's rewarding.
Federico is a flawed but very likeable character, one whose hurt you genuinely feel. His white complexion had kept him safe and isolated him. I don't want to feel black just because I've learned to say I'm black, like a parrot, I want to really understand. Throughout the story he is confronted with the new generation of activists, one who, he can tell, is disappointed with his actions. At the same time though, he is baffled by their actions. (...)when they take action it's the action of ripping the scalp off an enemy's head and displaying it on the internet for all the world to see, no matter the consequences, capturing virtual trophies and displaying them in their rankings, in the virtual clubhouse, accumulating like the value of which most people of our generation can barely recognize.
On the surface, Federico's ability to effortlessly infiltrate in the white crowd may appear selfish, cowardly; he may even be a bit vain. However, it's hard not to understand why he may want to disappear in a sea of whiteness; in the middle of that fateful day in 1984, we watch him be evaluated for the army and experience with him, the ruthless humiliation of a racist despicable sergeant who is allowed to humiliate black recruits for what feels like hours--that is until one of the recruits turns around and knocks him out with a single great punch to the face. For a second we feel exhilarated, rewarded even. Until, a few scenes later, we come back to the black man who threw the punch: the crying (...) revealed not his bravery but his despair, the despair of someone my own age who knew he'd ruined his life, ruined his whole life by not allowing himself to be humiliated.
It's a book about an adrift character in his 50s (You collect noise, every new noise you encounter you drag it over and add it to the rest, so certain that accumulating all that noise will somehow be fuel for your escape, but it doesn't work. ), trying to understand if there is one acceptable way forward for his society ( Anger never turns into solace).
The book griped me slowly, but gripped me it did. The translator's word was also very illuminating, as he discussed the difficulties of translating a book in a particular Portuguese dialect (Brazilian), in a particular Brazilian dialect (Porto Alegre), in a particular individual dialect (what linguists call an idiolect, i.e. the use of language that's unique to the individual). The author's note made a great point at clarifying that "racial discourses are [not] the same everywhere, that they [do not] map tidily onto one another--in language or lived experience--nor that the same things are likely to cause offence. Rather [this book] represents as best it can one experience's specificities, and works on an assumption that our sometimes dogmatic attitudes to singular, simplified, acceptable discurses are in fact culturally and historically contingent, and that mine--or yours--might eve benefit from a challenge by other realities elsewhere, the more individual, the more personal, the more particular, the better.
domenreads's review
challenging
reflective
medium-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? It's complicated
- Loveable characters? Yes
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? Yes
4.0
annie_reads_books's review against another edition
reflective
fast-paced
- Plot- or character-driven? A mix
- Strong character development? No
- Loveable characters? No
- Diverse cast of characters? Yes
- Flaws of characters a main focus? It's complicated
3.0
quercus707's review
4.0
An engrossing onion of a book, about how the consequences of our actions take hold of us, despite our contention that meanwhile we have improved.