Black Rhombus: Mário de Andrade, Brazil’s Interpreter

Angela Teodoro Grillo’s O losango negro: Mário de Andrade, intérprete do Brasil (Black Rhombus: Mário de Andrade, Brazil's Interepreter) puts in perspective the presence and influence of Black life in the writer’s oeuvre. The author proposes an unprecedented reading of his work, revealing how art, culture and issues from Black experience in Brazil affected various dimensions of the work of Mário de Andrade — the “mestiço bard” —, from his literary creation to his criticism, from his folk and cultural studies to his political action.

The starting point for this analysis is the document collection Preto (Black), name given by Mário de Andrade himself, discovered by the author in the IEB-USP archives in 2007. This material, composed mainly of working annotations regarding reading and commentary collected from the late 1920s and the modernist artist’s death, in 1945, involves cultural, historic and anthropologic aspects relating to the Black population in Brazil. Black Rhombus includes part of this dossier, in addition to other essays analyses by the author, such as “Plano para a comemoração do Cinquentenário da Abolição em São Paulo” (“Plan for celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of abolition in São Paulo) (1938), “Sugestões para a comemoração do Cinquentenário da Abolição” (“Suggestions for celebrating for celebrating the fiftieth anniversary of abolition”) (1938) and “A expressão musical dos Estados Unidos” (“Musical expression in the United States”) (1940).

Angela Teodoro Grillo’s analysis opens space to reconsider Mário de Andrade based on aspects of his work that have been relegated to the background for a long time. The image of the “rhombus”, which reoccur’s in the intellectual’s work, becomes a crossroads where various vectors meet: a cross-cultural space of mestiçagem conscience, awareness of racist violence, and valorization of Brazilian culture.

“Black life didn’t escape Mário de Andrade’s lenses, then. What we must ask is why it hasn’t been duly noticed in so long. A book like Angela’s helps us to discover the reasons.” Mário Augusto Medeiros, sociologist and professor at Unicamp (Campinas State University)

“This anxiously awaited book reveals how unfounded were the accusations that the ‘mestiço bard’ hid his color and origins, inherited from his Black grandmothers.” Ligia Fonseca Ferreira, associate professor of the Literature Department at Unifesp (São Paulo Federal University)

“While Exu is an icon of the complexity of our cultural formation — semiosis itself, as taught by Leda Maria Martins —, in permanent process, Mário Raul de Morais Andrade is the sign-man that challenges us to read the Brazil-sign as an open-ended question: difficult, interrupted, re-asked a thousand times.” Ricardo Aleixo, poeta, artist and researcher of intermedia poetics.

Excerpts
“The still traditional echoes of the abolitionist campaign and subsequent slave liberation […] would be damning evidence that in Brazil there’s no colored line. But if we listen to the most intimate pulse of our social and family life, we’ll find within us a quite clear colored line, although prejudice never reaches the social villainy practiced int he lands of English influence. However, without this villainy, it seems to me incontestable that the white man in Brazil sees the Black man as inferior.” Mário de Andrade, in “Linha de cor” (1939), featured in O losango negro

“By giving focus to lyricism, I attempt to organize and measure the studies of Black culture and race relations in the polymath’s thought and, finally, in the Andradian understanding of Brazil. The writer, thought his life, reaches an understanding of the racial complexities of a country that traditionally hides the violences of racist prejudice and systemic racism. Mário de Andrade, as a poet, exposes collective and individual problems of class and color; besides, the Black man, as an alterity he observes, also appears in the sphere of art and love, as happiness, beauty and fulfillment, offering to the reader multiple possibilities of existence for the Black Brazilian population, going against limiting stereotypes.” Angela Teodoro Grillo

About the author
Angela Teodoro Grillo was born in São Paulo and lives in Belém do Pará. She holds an undergraduate degree in Portuguese/French, and a master’s and a PhD in Literature from São Paulo University (USP), with a thesis that was nominated to the 2015 Capes Award. She conducted a post-doctorate fellowship in the Institute of Brazilian Studies (IEB-USP) and, since her undergraduate research, under guidance of Telê Ancona Lopez, dedicated herself to studying Mário de Andrade’s archives, becoming a specialist in his work. She has published Sambas insonhados: O negro na perspectiva de Mário de Andrade (2016). She’s currently a professor of Literature at the Pará Federal University (UFPA) in Belém, where she leads the research group Mil Marias (ILC/UFPA/CNPq), connected to Mário de Andrade’s theoretical and methodological proposals to reflect on Brazilian culture and literature.

About the collection
The Encruzilhada collection intends to build a landscape of Brazilian and foreign authors working with contemporary issues such as antiracisms, feminisms and decolonial thoughts. Edited by José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo, a Doctor of Philosophy and professor at ECA/USP, the collection presents authors who think about the present, attempting to shed a light on how certain processes, as they're faced, understood and transformed, can change historical perception.

Specifications
Title O losango negro: Mário de Andrade, intérprete do Brasil
[Black Rhombus: Mário de Andrade, Brazil’s Interpreter]
Author Angela Teodoro Grillo
Collection Encruzilhada
Collection Editor José Fernando Peixoto de Azevedo
Language Portuguese
Page count 336
Publisher Cobogó
ISBN 978-65-5691-185-4
Cover Thiago Lacaz
Format Softcover
Size 14x21 cm
Year 2025
Price R$ 96.00