Technology

Gabriela is successful wherever its production is allowed. Since 1958, in places where dictatorship hasn’t censored it, it has been a notorious work. Nowadays it has numerous translations around the world and adaptations to the screens that were of the same success as the novel.  

We can trace the popularity of this novel to the way it was represented in the North American press, a fundamental step to its global popularity and spread.  

Cuba was the starting point, in the 1960s, for the global growth of interest in Latin American literature. Cuban’s revolution brought the political focus to this region of the world with editors searching for new works to translate. In 1961, the editor Alfred Knopf travelled to Brazil and, when he arrived in Salvador, he was welcomed by Amado, whose charisma and affability he enjoyed. They became friends and Knopf, later on, decided to take Gabriela Cravo e Canela to the USA.

Needless to say that the role of the press was important during the release of the work since it was, either due to strategic or commercial reasons or simply due to a difference of perspective, one that emerged from North-American critics with very different results than previous ones. While mentioning the publishing of Gabriela in different countries, The New York Times writes:

“If all his other works had the same flow and mastery of senses, full of life and nature as this translation by James L. Taylor and William Grossman, the heroine “of a cinnamon color” of Mr. Amado would have a chance of becoming as internationally famous as those other Latin American beauties: Gina Lollobrigida and Sophia Loren.”(Orville Prescott, The New York Times, September 12, 1962)

This sudden popularity in the USA was crucial as a social infrastructure to spread this novel and its views to other parts of the world, as well as the creation of a clearer image of the Brazilian people. A very important factor for the construction of that image was also the creation of two big icons of that period: Carmem Miranda, “The Brazilian Bombshell”, with the same exoticism and sensuality attributed to the Brazilian woman; and Ze Carioca, the carefree and courteous friend of Donald Duck. These symbols, associated with being Brazilian during the ’40s, contrasted greatly with the idealized figure of the “self-made man”. That exoticism and interest curiously led to the success of the Brazilian identity and literature in the USA.

For all this, Gabriela Cravo e Canela was an essential stepping stone for Brazil's identity and its relations with the world.