If I were to calculate the cumulative amount of time I’ve spent in Brazil it would total a quarter of my lifetime. Come every June, my parents would set my sister and I on a plane to Brazil. This fourteen hour journey consisted of three airplanes and one five hour car ride through the mountainous curves of Minas Gerais. As an observant kid, it was trippy how transportation alone could set you into different time zone, how another corner of the world could be feel so different yet inexplicably familiar. Arriving in small town Minas Gerais also felt like traveling back in time, to a place where neighbors show up unannounced at your door and sit for hours chatting over Cafe.
These summer trips were also an introspective journey, where I’d absorb all of the beauty and pain of ancestral past. Growing up my parents called me a chameleon, alluding to a duality in my personality that developed throughout these trips. I developed comfort within the discomfort of fractured identity, in my ability to observe yet assimilate, to be stand tall in my individualism yet be part of the collective. When I’d return home to New York I’d experience a powerful sense of loss, which I’d learn wasn't only about missing my family, but more about missing a part of myself that could only accessed in Brazil.
Last August was the first time I bought my own ticket to Brazil and my relationship with the trip shifted to one of personal responsibility to reflect on my identity. I’ve always felt that I have “uma alma brasileira”, a Brazilian soul. But much of this feeling comes from my nostalgia for a Brazil that seems to vanishing, one where Samba is played in the streets, not last year’s American Top 40 hits. This time around I knew what I’d come in search for but it wasn’t easy to find. I wanted to get to the roots of my family’s story, uncover truths, and turn it into fiction. But I found it impossible to ask the difficult questions. Instead I spent hours in my aunt’s pool, eating fresh mangos, reading intergenerational novels, and giving thanks for a sanctuary to escape the unforgiving heat. In the afternoons I’d sit with my grandmother and look through old photo albums. This specific picture of my grandpa teaching guitar to my mom and her friends stirred something in me. Maybe the story I’ve been looking for has been right in front of me all along.
