Candace Slater – författare

In folktales told throughout much of the Brazilian Amazon, dolphins take human form, attend raucous dances and festivals, seduce men and women, and carry them away to a city beneath the river. They are encantados, or Enchanted Beings, capable of provoking death or madness, but also called upon to help shamanic healers. Male dolphins - accomplished dancers who appear dressed in dapper straw hats, white suits and with shiny black shoes - reportedly father numerous children. The females are said to lure away solitary fishermen. Both sinister and charming, these characters resist definition and thus domination; greedy and lascivious outsiders, they are increasingly symbolic of a distinctly Amazonian culture politically, socially, economically and environmentally under seige. Candace Slater examines these stories in this book, both as folk narratives and as representations of culture and conflict in Amazonia. Her study discusses the tales from the viewpoints of genre, performance and gender, but centres on them as responses to the great changes sweeping the Amazon today.According to Slater, these surprisingly widespread tales reflect Amazonians' own mixed reactions to the ongoing destruction of the rainforest and the resulting transformations in the social as well as physical landscape. Offering an informed view of Brazilian culture, this book crosses the boundaries of folklore, literature, anthropology and Latin American studies.

In folktales told throughout much of the Brazilian Amazon, dolphins take human form, attend raucous dances and festivals, seduce men and women, and carry them away to a city beneath the river. They are encantados, or Enchanted Beings, capable of provoking death or madness, but also called upon to help shamanic healers. Male dolphins - accomplished dancers who appear dressed in dapper straw hats, white suits and with shiny black shoes - reportedly father numerous children. The females are said to lure away solitary fishermen. Both sinister and charming, these characters resist definition and thus domination; greedy and lascivious outsiders, they are increasingly symbolic of a distinctly Amazonian culture politically, socially, economically and environmentally under seige. Candace Slater examines these stories in this book, both as folk narratives and as representations of culture and conflict in Amazonia. Her study discusses the tales from the viewpoints of genre, performance and gender, but centres on them as responses to the great changes sweeping the Amazon today.According to Slater, these surprisingly widespread tales reflect Amazonians' own mixed reactions to the ongoing destruction of the rainforest and the resulting transformations in the social as well as physical landscape. Offering an informed view of Brazilian culture, this book crosses the boundaries of folklore, literature, anthropology and Latin American studies.

Candace Slater takes us on a journey into the Amazon that will forever change our ideas about one of the most written-about, filmed, and fought-over areas in the world. In this book she deftly traces a rich and marvelous legacy of stories and images of the Amazon that reflects the influence of widely different groups of people--conquistadors, corporate executives, subsistence farmers --over the centuries. A careful, passionate consideration of one of the most powerful environmental icons of our time, Entangled Edens makes clear that we cannot defend the Amazon's dazzling array of plants and animals without comprehending its equally astonishing human and cultural diversity. Early explorers describe encounters with fearsome warrior women and tell of golden cities complete with twenty-four-carat kings. Contemporary miners talk about a living, breathing gold. TV documentaries decry deforestation and mercury poisoning. How do these disparate visions of the Amazon relate to one another?As she fits the pieces of the puzzle together, Slater shows how today's widespread portrayal of the region as a fragile rain forest on the brink of annihilation is every bit as likely as earlier depictions to obscure important aspects of this immense and complicated region. In this book, Slater draws on her fifteen years of experience collecting stories and oral histories among many different groups of people in the Amazon. Throughout Entangled Edens, the voices of contemporary Amazonians mingle with the analyses of such writers as Claude Levi-Strauss, Theodore Roosevelt, and nineteenth-century naturalist Henry Walter Bates. Slater convinces us that these stories and ideas, together with an understanding of their origins and ongoing impact, are as critical as scientific analyses in the fight to preserve the rain forest.

Candace Slater's new book focuses on narratives concerning Fray Leopoldo de Alpandeire (1864-1956), a Capuchin friar from Granada and probably the most popular nonconsecrated saint today in all of Spain. In tracing the emergence of a group of contemporary legends about Fray Leopoldo, Slater discusses both the stories she tape-recorded in the streets of Granada and the friar's official biography. She underscores the essential pluralism of the tales, their undercurrent of resistance to institutional authority, and their deep concern for the relationship between past and present. Bearing witness to the subtlety and resilience of even the most apparently conservative folk-literary forms, these stories are not only about the role of saints and miracles in an increasingly secular and industrial society but, first and foremost, also about the legacy of the Franco years. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Candace Slater’s Stories on a String: The Brazilian Literatura de Cordel introduces readers to one of the most vibrant yet understudied traditions of popular literature in the modern world. Rooted in the centuries-old Iberian ballad and chapbook heritage but transformed within the cultural, linguistic, and historical context of Northeastern Brazil, the cordel—or folheto—emerged as the primary reading material of working-class communities. These verse pamphlets, sold in marketplaces and performed by poets, combine news, legend, social critique, and fantasy. Slater situates the cordel within Brazil’s broader cultural landscape, demonstrating its central role not only as entertainment but also as a vehicle of collective memory and commentary on historical events, politics, religion, and daily struggles. Drawing upon more than a thousand texts and extensive fieldwork, she reveals how these deceptively modest “stories on a string” shaped and reflected the lives of millions of Brazilians.The book also foregrounds the cordel’s influence on twentieth-century Brazilian intellectual and artistic life, tracing its impact on figures ranging from Jorge Amado to Ariano Suassuna, and examining how middle-class and elite audiences have increasingly appropriated and reinterpreted this once-marginal form. Slater’s analysis balances structural readings of recurring narrative patterns with close attention to performance contexts, poet–audience interactions, and the shifting meanings of the tradition in an era of modernization and mass media. Combining literary scholarship, cultural history, and ethnography, Stories on a String makes a compelling case for the cordel as both a deeply rooted folk practice and a dynamic, evolving art form central to understanding Brazil’s social fabric.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Trail of Miracles: Stories from a Pilgrimage in Northeast Brazil by Candace Slater offers a vivid literary ethnography of devotion, memory, and community in Juazeiro do Norte, a city renowned for its annual pilgrimage honoring Padre Cícero Romão Batista. Unlike most Catholic pilgrimages, Juazeiro draws more than a million people each year in honor of a priest never canonized as a saint. Through the miracle stories told by residents and pilgrims, Slater reveals how Padre Cícero’s figure continues to embody poverty, resilience, and traditional values in Northeast Brazil—while also traveling south with migrants seeking work in Brazil’s industrial centers. These narratives are not only testimonies of faith but also documents of social survival, enmeshed in hierarchies of patronage and infused with centuries-old hagiographic traditions.Slater approaches her subject as both listener and writer, foregrounding her methods and the challenges of ethnography. Drawing on over 150 hours of recorded stories from more than 700 individuals, she examines how residents privatize Padre Cícero’s miracles as personal memories while pilgrims fashion them into communal “lives” that serve as master legends. In doing so, she highlights how oral traditions adapt across contexts, sustaining belief and identity amid poverty and rapid change. Trail of Miracles is at once a work of folklore, anthropology, and literary analysis, offering an unparalleled window into the symbolic power of Padre Cícero for millions of Brazilians. It illuminates the ways in which storytelling sustains faith, negotiates hardship, and binds individuals into a shared, if contested, sense of belonging.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Candace Slater's new book focuses on narratives concerning Fray Leopoldo de Alpandeire (1864-1956), a Capuchin friar from Granada and probably the most popular nonconsecrated saint today in all of Spain. In tracing the emergence of a group of contemporary legends about Fray Leopoldo, Slater discusses both the stories she tape-recorded in the streets of Granada and the friar's official biography. She underscores the essential pluralism of the tales, their undercurrent of resistance to institutional authority, and their deep concern for the relationship between past and present. Bearing witness to the subtlety and resilience of even the most apparently conservative folk-literary forms, these stories are not only about the role of saints and miracles in an increasingly secular and industrial society but, first and foremost, also about the legacy of the Franco years. This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press's mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1990.

Candace Slater’s Stories on a String: The Brazilian Literatura de Cordel introduces readers to one of the most vibrant yet understudied traditions of popular literature in the modern world. Rooted in the centuries-old Iberian ballad and chapbook heritage but transformed within the cultural, linguistic, and historical context of Northeastern Brazil, the cordel—or folheto—emerged as the primary reading material of working-class communities. These verse pamphlets, sold in marketplaces and performed by poets, combine news, legend, social critique, and fantasy. Slater situates the cordel within Brazil’s broader cultural landscape, demonstrating its central role not only as entertainment but also as a vehicle of collective memory and commentary on historical events, politics, religion, and daily struggles. Drawing upon more than a thousand texts and extensive fieldwork, she reveals how these deceptively modest “stories on a string” shaped and reflected the lives of millions of Brazilians.The book also foregrounds the cordel’s influence on twentieth-century Brazilian intellectual and artistic life, tracing its impact on figures ranging from Jorge Amado to Ariano Suassuna, and examining how middle-class and elite audiences have increasingly appropriated and reinterpreted this once-marginal form. Slater’s analysis balances structural readings of recurring narrative patterns with close attention to performance contexts, poet–audience interactions, and the shifting meanings of the tradition in an era of modernization and mass media. Combining literary scholarship, cultural history, and ethnography, Stories on a String makes a compelling case for the cordel as both a deeply rooted folk practice and a dynamic, evolving art form central to understanding Brazil’s social fabric.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1982.

Trail of Miracles: Stories from a Pilgrimage in Northeast Brazil by Candace Slater offers a vivid literary ethnography of devotion, memory, and community in Juazeiro do Norte, a city renowned for its annual pilgrimage honoring Padre Cícero Romão Batista. Unlike most Catholic pilgrimages, Juazeiro draws more than a million people each year in honor of a priest never canonized as a saint. Through the miracle stories told by residents and pilgrims, Slater reveals how Padre Cícero’s figure continues to embody poverty, resilience, and traditional values in Northeast Brazil—while also traveling south with migrants seeking work in Brazil’s industrial centers. These narratives are not only testimonies of faith but also documents of social survival, enmeshed in hierarchies of patronage and infused with centuries-old hagiographic traditions.Slater approaches her subject as both listener and writer, foregrounding her methods and the challenges of ethnography. Drawing on over 150 hours of recorded stories from more than 700 individuals, she examines how residents privatize Padre Cícero’s miracles as personal memories while pilgrims fashion them into communal “lives” that serve as master legends. In doing so, she highlights how oral traditions adapt across contexts, sustaining belief and identity amid poverty and rapid change. Trail of Miracles is at once a work of folklore, anthropology, and literary analysis, offering an unparalleled window into the symbolic power of Padre Cícero for millions of Brazilians. It illuminates the ways in which storytelling sustains faith, negotiates hardship, and binds individuals into a shared, if contested, sense of belonging.This title is part of UC Press's Voices Revived program, which commemorates University of California Press’s mission to seek out and cultivate the brightest minds and give them voice, reach, and impact. Drawing on a backlist dating to 1893, Voices Revived makes high-quality, peer-reviewed scholarship accessible once again using print-on-demand technology. This title was originally published in 1986.

Candace Slater takes us on a journey into the Amazon that will forever change our ideas about one of the most written-about, filmed, and fought-over areas in the world. In this book she deftly traces a rich and marvelous legacy of stories and images of the Amazon that reflects the influence of widely different groups of people--conquistadors, corporate executives, subsistence farmers --over the centuries. A careful, passionate consideration of one of the most powerful environmental icons of our time, Entangled Edens makes clear that we cannot defend the Amazon''s dazzling array of plants and animals without comprehending its equally astonishing human and cultural diversity. Early explorers describe encounters with fearsome warrior women and tell of golden cities complete with twenty-four-carat kings. Contemporary miners talk about a living, breathing gold. TV documentaries decry deforestation and mercury poisoning. How do these disparate visions of the Amazon relate to one another? As she fits the pieces of the puzzle together, Slater shows how today''s widespread portrayal of the region as a fragile rain forest on the brink of annihilation is every bit as likely as earlier depictions to obscure important aspects of this immense and complicated region. In this book, Slater draws on her fifteen years of experience collecting stories and oral histories among many different groups of people in the Amazon. Throughout Entangled Edens, the voices of contemporary Amazonians mingle with the analyses of such writers as Claude Lévi-Strauss, Theodore Roosevelt, and nineteenth-century naturalist Henry Walter Bates. Slater convinces us that these stories and ideas, together with an understanding of their origins and ongoing impact, are as critical as scientific analyses in the fight to preserve the rain forest.

The essays collected here offer important new reflections on the multiple images of and rhetoric surrounding the rain forest. The slogan “Save the Rain Forest!”-emblazoned on glossy posters of tall trees wreathed in vines and studded with monkeys and parrots-promotes the popular image of a marvelously wild and vulnerable rain forest. Although representations like these have fueled laudable rescue efforts, in many ways they have done more harm than good, as these essays show. Such icons tend to conceal both the biological variety of rain forests and the diversity of their human inhabitants. They also frequently obscure the specific local and global interactions that are as much a part of today’s rain forests as are the array of plants and animals. In attending to these complexities, this volume focuses on specific portrayals of rain forests and the consequences of these characterizations for both forest inhabitants and outsiders.From diverse disciplines-history, archaeology, sociology, literature, law, and cultural anthropology-the contributors provide case studies from Latin America, Asia, and Africa. They point the way toward a search for a rain forest that is both a natural entity and a social history, an inhabited place and a shifting set of ideas. The essayists demonstrate how the single image of a wild and yet fragile forest became fixed in the popular mind in the late twentieth century, thereby influencing the policies of corporations, environmental groups, and governments. Such simplistic conceptions, In Search of the Rain Forest shows, might lead companies to tout their “green” technologies even as they try to downplay the dissenting voices of native populations. Or they might cause a government to create a tiger reserve that displaces peaceful peasants while opening the doors to poachers and bandits. By encouraging a nuanced understanding of distinctive, constantly evolving forests with different social and natural histories, this volume provides an important impetus for protection efforts that take into account the rain forest in all of its complexity.Contributors. Scott Fedick, Alex Greene, Paul Greenough, Nancy Peluso, Suzana Sawyer, Candace Slater, Charles Zerner