Blessed Anastacia

"A nuanced and brilliant ethnography, this is a major contribution to scholarship." -"Foreign Affairs "The puzzle of the Brazilian style of race relations has intrigued generations of scholars, but Burdick charts out new territory by examining racism in the context of Afro-Brazilian activism, popular religion, and the cultural politics of gender and desire. Avoiding simple formulas and always attentive to complexity, Burdick has produced both a nuanced ethnography and a contribution to theories of social movements and activist scholarship." -David J. Hess, professor of anthropology, Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, and author of "Samba in the Night: Spiritism in Brazil ""Blessed Anastacia is a brilliant, passionate study of the realities of race and injustice in Brazil....and represents the very best in new thinking from anthropology and cultural studies about Latin America." -Orin Starn, author of" Nightwatch: The Making of a Movement in the Peruvian Andes "A nuanced, multidimensional and sensitive analysis of race and popular culture in Brazil." -Robert Stam, author of "Tropical Multiculturalism: A Comparative History of Race in Brazilian Culture and Cinema "Burdick focuses on the ways in which women of color in Brazil experience three separate forms of Christianity: the inculturated Catholic mass, Pentecostalism, and the cult of Anastacia, a Brazilian symbol of black female slavery..."Blessed Anastaciais a model for research into why and how individuals are attracted to particular religious forms and expressions." --Hannah W. Stewart-Gambino "Latin American Research Review