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Chica da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth Century. By JÚNIA FERREIRA FURTADO. New York: Cambridge University Press, 2008. 348 pp. $75.00 (cloth); $23.99 (paper).
The story of Chica da Silva, an enslaved woman from the Brazilian mining regions freed by a Portuguese royal diamond administrator after becoming his mistress, remains a powerful symbol for understanding contemporary notions of what it meant to be a slave in Brazil. Her myth has inspired Brazilian writers, musicians, and filmmakers, including Carlos Diegues, whose 1975 film Xica da Silva was instrumental in promoting Chica's iconic image as a powerful black woman who used her sexuality to give her power over white men and to circumvent the racial and social hierarchies of the Brazilian slave system. Some popular historians and public figures have used the popular view of Chica's life to argue for a more benevolent form of slavery in Brazil and a greater racial tolerance. Júnia Ferreira Furtado's excellent book Chica da Silva: A Brazilian Slave of the Eighteenth Century moves beyond the myths to uncover the real Chica. Through her exhaustive analysis of notarial and ecclesiastical records in Portugal and Brazil, Furtado paints a vivid portrait of Chica and her descendents that moves beyond the "stereotypes commonly attributed to [Chica], be it the notion that she was an exception or that she was an example of the sensuality of the Brazilian mulatta or even of cordial conviviality between the races in Brazil" (p. 19). Her depiction weaves the life of Chica with those of other freed women of color in...