Jubiabá by Jorge Amado

First published: 1935 (English translation, 1984)

Type of plot: Political romance

Time of work: The 1920’s and 1930’s

Locale: The seaport city of Salvador, in the state of Bahia, Brazil, and neighboring areas

Principal Characters:

• Antônio Balduíno (Baldo), the black protagonist, a street-gang leader, song composer, fighter, and labor leader
• Jubiabá, an old voodoo priest of the candomblé or macumba sect
• Old Luísa, Antônio’s aunt, who reared him
• Ze Camarão, a storyteller, singer, capoeira fighter, and Antônio’s teacher
• Amelia, a white cook who beats young Antônio
• Viriato, a dwarf
• Gordo, Antônio’s best friend, highly religious
• Luigi, Antônio’s trainer, later a part owner of a circus
• Joana, one of Antônio’s lovers
• Maria dos Reis, another of Antônio’s lovers
• Rosenda Rosedá, a circus-ballet performer, another of Antônio’s lovers
• Lindinalva Pereira, a rich white girl, later a poor prostitute, whom Antônio loves
• Gustavinho, Lindinalva’s illegitimate son
• Gustavo Barreira, Gustavinho’s father, an ambitious lawyer

The Novel

Although Jubiabá is named for an old voodoo priest, the novel relates the romantic, adventurous life of Antônio Balduíno, a black hero of the Bahian masses. The loose, episodic story begins with Antônio’s childhood and continues through his mid-twenties. An ABC ballad at the end tells of his death at the hands of a treacherous murderer. Antônio thus realizes his lifelong ambition to become the subject of an ABC ballad.

The novel opens on a brief boxing match, showing Antônio, the Bahian heavyweight champion, beating the Central European Champion, a blond German, to the delight of the partisan Bahian crowd. Chapter 2 quickly switches back to Antônio’s childhood. As an eight-year-old, he lives with his old aunt, Luísa, and roams Capa-Negro Hill with his playmates, whom he leads into mischief. He does not attend school, but he imbibes a rich folklore from the poor people around him, especially Zé Camarão and old Jubiabá. For example, Jubiabá explains that Capa-Negro Hill got its name from a cruel white master who castrated slaves for not reproducing. Jubiabá also tells about Zumbi dos Palmares, a slave who ran away and led a warlike confederation of other runaways. Zumbi dos Palmares becomes Antônio’s hero.

When his aunt goes crazy (and eventually dies), the twelve-year-old Antônio is adopted by a well-to-do white family, the Pereiras, who live on Zumbi dos Palmares Street. The Pereiras give him some schooling and light servant’s duties and make him a companion of Lindinalva, their daughter. Yet Amelia, the white cook, beats him constantly and, when he is fifteen, accuses him of looking at Lindinalva’s legs. Punished severely, Antônio runs away. He completes his growing up on the seafront streets of Salvador, where he leads a gang of intimidating young “beggars” and sleeps with girls on the nearby sand dunes. After two years, the police break up his gang by arresting the members and beating them with rubber thongs.

Antônio returns to Capa-Negro Hill, where he learns capoeira fighting and guitar playing from Zé Camarão. He earns his livelihood by composing and selling an occasional samba, which invariably makes the Bahian hit parade, but he spends most of his time attending parties, festivals, and Jubiabá’s wild macumba sessions and making love to Joana, Maria dos Reis, and other eager girls. His life takes an especially exciting turn when, discovered and trained by Luigi, he becomes a professional boxer. Known as Baldo the Negro, he demolishes all competition. He appears to be bound for Rio de Janeiro and North America, but then he learns of Lindinalva’s engagement on the day of a big bout, gets drunk, and is knocked out by Miguez the Peruvian.

Antônio now begins a two-year period of wandering. Ashamed and in disgrace, he sails on the Homeless Traveler up the Paraguaçu River to the tobacco country, where he and his pal Gordo work in the tobacco fields. Without women, he becomes so desperate that he lusts after a twelve-year-old girl at her mother’s wake, even though the bloated corpse eyes him accusingly. He eventually gets into a knife fight with the boss, Zequinha. Thinking that he has killed Zequinha (who lives but wants revenge), Antônio flees and evades a massive manhunt. Hopping a train, he winds up in Feira de Santana, where he again meets Luigi, now part owner of a near-bankrupt circus. Antônio joins the circus, fighting challengers or the bear and falling in love with Rosenda Rosedá, the sexy black ballerina. When the circus fails, he, Rosenda, and the bear return to Salvador.

In Salvador, the bear goes to Gordo, and Antônio and Rosenda eventually split up. Again Antônio hears of Lindinalva, whose fortunes have meanwhile plummeted. Her father died bankrupt, and her fiancé left her pregnant. So, after the baby was born, Lindinalva turned to prostitution. The changes in her name marked her decline: Lindinalva, Linda, Freckles. Now, physically spent, she is dying, and on her deathbed she evokes a promise from Antônio to help Amelia care for little Gustavinho. Antônio goes to work as a stevedore, just in time to become involved in a bitter strike. Ironically, the workers’ negotiator is the lawyer Gustavo Barreira, Gustavinho’s father, who sells out to the owners. The workers reject Barreira’s watered-down deal, however, as well as Barreira himself; the strike continues, spreads to other workers throughout the city, and becomes violent. With Antônio as one of their leaders, the workers hold out and triumph totally, winning all of their demands, including a 100 percent raise.

The Characters

There is a large cast of colorful characters in Jubiabá, but most of them exist only to fill out the cast or to add color. Amado’s concept of character in Jubiabá is strictly ad hoc—whatever serves the purpose of the moment, usually some need of the rambling plot or diffuse theme. Poor, working-class characters make brief appearances, providing varied exhibits of how the working class is ground down. Some of these characters also allow for momentary diversions, often sentimental or titillating. For example, Ricardo the tobacco worker shows the plight of womanless men: He lies in his bunk, fantasizes about a picture of a nude actress on the wall, and masturbates. Then, in a bit of overdone irony, he accidentally blows off his hands with a bomb.

Like Ricardo, several other characters seem to be walking sideshows (some are actually in the circus, such as the Snake-Man). At least one of these serves a higher function, Viriato the dwarf, a member of Antônio’s street gang. After the gang is broken up, Viriato becomes so despondent that he drowns himself; when his corpse is pulled from the harbor, crabs can be heard rattling around inside his abdominal cavity. In the novel, Viriato’s gruesome death comes to represent one important alternative, “the road home” which Antônio sometimes contemplates and which other working-class characters take.

Some characters exist mainly to satisfy the needs of Antônio. Antônio needs a teacher, so Zé Camarão is invented. Antônio needs a street gang, so the gang is invented. Antônio needs lovers, so Joana, Maria dos Reis, and countless nameless girls are invented. Exceptions here are Lindinalva Pereira and Rosenda Rosedá, whose characters are somewhat more developed, but even they do not escape a stereotyped treatment. Rosenda is sexy and sassy, while Lindinalva is pretty and pathetic. The young women, incidentally, tend to satisfy not only Antônio’s needs but also the most demanding macho expectations. Rosenda’s breasts are said to fill a room, and Maria dos Reis gets so excited at a macumba session that she falls to the floor foaming at both the mouth and genitals.

Even Jubiabá, despite having the novel named after him, exists primarily through his relationship to Antônio. The old priest is interesting in himself, but his marvelous voodoo skills—which can cure diseases, bring back straying lovers, and wreak revenge—are taken for granted. More important, Jubiabá represents the old spirit of freedom and cultural continuity with the African past. He implants this spirit in young Antônio and intermittently reinforces it: The mysterious priest has time off from his voodoo miracles and macumba sessions to show up at the Pereiras, dressed in his Sunday best and out of character, to take young Antônio on instructive visits to old Luísa. Nor does it matter, near the novel’s end, that Jubiabá does not understand labor unions and strikes: It remains for his protégé, Antônio, to translate the old spirit of freedom into modern terms.

Despite his macho shallowness—his fighting and loving, relieved by an occasional samba—Antônio’s character is even more inconsistent than old Jubiabá’s. Antônio, a man who uses women and who lusts after a twelve-year-old girl at her mother’s funeral, is presented as a hero. (Supposedly, this lecher was not guilty of looking at Lindinalva’s legs.) Supposedly, too, he thinks only of Lindinalva when he loves the other women, and, after not seeing her for years, he immediately becomes her willing slave. This good-time Charlie, who has always eschewed work and responsibilities, is thus converted into a man of commitment: He takes on little Gustavinho (with the help of “kind-hearted” Amelia who had beaten him when he was a child) and the aspirations of the working class.

Critical Context

Any critical estimate of Jubiabá—its rambling plot, its inconsistent characters and themes, its uneven style, its gross excesses—must take into account that Amado wrote it during his early twenties: It is a fervent young man’s novel. For all its logical disunity and lack of restraint, Jubiabá has a powerful unity of feeling, as Amado announces his loyalties to Bahia, to Afro-Brazilian culture, and to leftist politics. This emotional unity makes Jubiabá perhaps the best of Amado’s early propagandistic works, certainly a representative example.

Amado’s early work long remained untranslated into English; therefore, for readers of English familiar only with his mature work—particularly such comic, sexy bestsellers as Gabriela, cravo e canela (1958) Gabriela, Clove and Cinnamon, 1962), Dona Flor e seus dois maridos (1966; Dona Flor and Her Two Husbands, 1969), and Tiêta do Agreste (1977; Tieta, the Goat Girl, 1979)—his early propagandistic phase may come as a surprise. Yet, as a formative novel, Jubiabá forecasts much of the later Amado. Although he toned down his politics (after repeated clashes with censors, jail terms, and exiles), no one can deny Amado’s continuing interest in local color and sex; nor, if his techniques have become more refined, can he be accused of developing inhibitions or restraint. With his political sympathies, his panorama of local color and characters, and his lack of restraint (whether sentimental or sexual), Amado might be called the twentieth century Brazilian Charles Dickens.

Bibliography

Chamberlain, Bobby J. Jorge Amado. Boston: Twayne, 1990. Useful, informative, and readable, this critical analysis of Amado’s work covers all periods of the novelist’s output while focusing on a few of the author’s most important works. A biographical chapter is included, along with an extensive bibliography.

Hinchberger, Bill. “Jorge Amado Writes from Heart, Home.” Variety 366 (March 31, 1997): 56. Hinchberger explores the inspirations that shape Amado’s work, the filming of Amado’s novels, and Amado’s reaction to the critical acclaim he has received. Offers interesting insight into the influences that shaped Amado’s work.

Robitaille, L. B. “These Men of Letters Speak for the Powerless.” World Press Review 38 (December, 1991): 26-27. An intriguing profile of Amado, covering his political activity, his life in Paris, and his feelings for his native Brazil. Presents background that sheds considerable light on his writings.