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The “Chinese Question” in Machado’s Journalism

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Book cover Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis

Part of the book series: New Directions in Latino American Cultures ((NDLAC))

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Abstract

This chapter adds one further (and unstudied) layer to the controversy surrounding Machado’s racial identity by analyzing his contributions to late-nineteenth-century debates regarding Chinese immigration to Brazil. In order to examine Machado’s ambivalent position on this question, Roncador relies on his crônicas(chronicles), reflecting on the visit of Mandarin Tong King Sing and his African-American assistant, G.A. Butley, to Brazil in October 1883. As Roncador argues, by ambiguously embracing the popular Sinophobia of his time, Machado ends up addressing the contentious overlap of nonwhite immigrant servitude and black slavery in Brazil. His crônicas and column reveal his strategy of using by-proxy black(ened) servants to denounce the whitening ideology that would soon give rise to the republican regime.

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Author information

Authors and Affiliations

  1. University of Texas, Austin, Austin Texas, USA

    Sonia Roncador

Authors
  1. Sonia Roncador
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Editor information

Editors and Affiliations

  1. Duke University, Durham, North Carolina, USA

    Lamonte Aidoo

  2. Middlebury College, Middlebury, Vermont, USA

    Daniel F. Silva

Copyright information

© 2016 The Editor(s) (if applicable) and The Author(s)

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Roncador, S. (2016). The “Chinese Question” in Machado’s Journalism. In: Aidoo, L., Silva, D. (eds) Emerging Dialogues on Machado de Assis. New Directions in Latino American Cultures. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-54174-1_8

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