“My Ol’ Black Mammy” in Brazilian Modernist Memoirs

Abstract

Such words of gratefulness and appreciation for a Black Mammy, taken from a 1888 folletin entitled ―Mai preta‖ ( Black Mammy‘) fail to reflect the recurring image of slaves in abolitionist literary and political texts of the second half of the 19th century. As Jurandir Costa Freire argues, the ―antislavery propaganda‖ in Brazil was founded on the idea of an ―irremediable antagonism‖ between master and slave, whose consequences implicated, among other evils, the degradation or perversion of family values. Regarding the wet-nurse and the foster mother, in particular, her intimate contact with the children of her masters, according to Sonia Giacomini, bestowed her ―o lugar privilegiado de agente de corrupcao da familia branca‖ [the privileged place of corruption‘s agent of the White family] (49). As we read in another 1880s newspaper, O Mentor das Brazileiras,