A New World Italian Discourse in Brazil

The Italian Colony of São Paulo: Race, Class, and Cultural Capital in Brazil by Giulia Riccò explores the history and social construction of the Italian community in São Paulo, Brazil, between the late nineteenth century and the course of the twentieth century. The book focuses on the ways in which Italian immigrants were racialized as “white” within a multiracial society. Unlike in the United States, where Italians often faced xenophobia and racial ambiguity, in São Paulo they were associated with ideas of modernization, civilization, and cultural superiority due to specific social, economic, and cultural factors. Riccò’s approach is based on cultural and literary analysis rather than purely sociological approaches and draws on a wide range of textual materials – including travel writing, short stories, newspaper columns, political essays, and memoirs – to trace what she defines as a ‘New World Italian discourse’. In her view, this discourse legitimizes and maintains the status of Italians as a model of a ‘modern’ minority and focuses on culture as the production of political identities. This discursive framework not only challenges traditional interpretations of Italian migration to the Americas but also contributes to our understanding of the origins of both racial nationalism in Italy and contemporary tensions surrounding national identity.