''Bom-Crioulo: The Black Man and the Cabin Boy'' () is a novel by the Brazilian writer Adolfo Caminha, first published in

1895 Events January * January 5 – Dreyfus affair: French officer Alfred Dreyfus is stripped of his army rank and sentenced to life imprisonment on Devil's Island (off French Guiana) on what is much later admitted to be a false charge of tr ...

. An English translation by E.A. Lacey was published in 1982 by ''Gay Sunshine''. The novel, whose narrative follows the character Amaro, an ex-slave who works for the

Navy A navy, naval force, military maritime fleet, war navy, or maritime force is the military branch, branch of a nation's armed forces principally designated for naval warfare, naval and amphibious warfare; namely, lake-borne, riverine, littoral z ...

and who, at a given moment, falls in love with the young

cabin boy A cabin boy or ship's boy is a boy or young man who waits on the officers and passengers of a ship, especially running errands for the captain. The modern merchant navy successor to the cabin boy is the steward's assistant. Duties Cabin boys ...

Aleixo, was the first major literary work on

homosexuality Homosexuality is romantic attraction, sexual attraction, or Human sexual activity, sexual behavior between people of the same sex or gender. As a sexual orientation, homosexuality is "an enduring pattern of emotional, romantic, and/or sexu ...

to be published in

Brazil Brazil, officially the Federative Republic of Brazil, is the largest country in South America. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by area, fifth-largest country by area and the List of countries and dependencies by population ...

, and one of the first to have a Black people, black person as its hero. The novel caused a stir upon its publication but was almost forgotten in the first half of the 20th century. In the second half of the 20th century, the novel has been republished several times in Brazil and translated into English, Spanish, German, French and Italian. While most view the novel as a positive example of social progress in Brazil, the novel actually displays significant nihilism and cynicism on the topic, declaring "não há lugar para a existência do negro e do homossexual que não o ghetto ou a morte", which in English means "there is no place for the existence of the black man nor the homosexual if not the ghetto or in death".

References

* Braga-Pinto, César . Othello's Pathologies: reading Adolfo Caminha with Lombroso. Comparative Literature 66:2 doi 10.1215/00104124-2682173 © 2014 by University of Oregon
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* Robert Howes ''Race and Transgressive Sexuality in Adolfo Caminha's "Bom-Crioulo"'', Luso-Brazilian Review, Vol. 38, No. 1. (Summer, 2001), pp. 41–62.

External links

''Bom-Crioulo''
1890s novels 1890s LGBTQ novels 1895 novels Brazilian LGBTQ novels Gay male romance novels Naturalist novels Novels about bisexual topics Novels about gay topics {{Brazil-lit-stub