You do not currently have permission to view the full text for this document. Please sign in to an account with an active subscription or contact support.
“Mãe Catirina's desire” portrays the common psychodynamic situation in which early 19th-century African women in Brazil, reduced to a life in slavery, found themselves. The author, with extensive experience in psychoanalysis on the African continent and in anthropological field research both in Africa and Brazil, arrives at some stunning insights through the analysis of an aetiological myth or legend concerned with a Brazilian folk drama: Bumba-meu-boi (Dance my ox!). The legend was collected by his American colleague, Dr. Kazadi wa Mukuna, of Kent State University, Ohio.
We have been waiting for Kazadi wa Mukuna's book on Bumba-meu-boi1 for exactly 17 years, ever since the author first published an account of his research findings in Maranhão in Tiago de Oliveira Pinto's volume Brasilien (1986, pp. 108-120). But sometimes delays whose causes are beyond an author's control, often connected with “market forces” and the struggles of finding a suitable publisher, may be advantageous. Although the earlier version of Kazadi's documentation of Bumba-meu-boi, the satirical music drama widely performed by Brazilian folks, was impressive, even as a 12-page article, the present book-size documentation exceeds the former in content and theoretical outlook. It is a thought-provoking book. Since 1976 and 1981, when the author was first involved in his Bumba-meu-boi field-research, he has been back in Brazil several times. When in 1986 Kazadi was given a field research grant by the Earthwatch Foundation, it opened up for him an opportunity to carry out even more systematic data gathering on a regular basis, across Maranhão,