Review by Choice Review
From the earliest days of US nationhood, immigrant streams have included many who were from the middling strata of their home societies. Such people are still coming. Among the most recent middle-class migrants are large numbers of well-educated Israelis, Indians, Koreans, and nearly 100,000 Brazilians, the subject of anthropologist Maxine Margolis's close-up, in-depth ethnography. Her book, a colorful, evocative, often personalized portrait, is far livelier and more engaging than many traditional anthropological monographs, yet it follows a format familiar to readers of community studies. The origins, movement, patterns of adaptation, and problems of adjustment of the Portuguese-speaking sojourners and new Americans are described and discussed. So, too, are the social institutions, internal structures, and relationships to and with those outside of the part geographic, part cultural place called "Little Brazil." Although critical of the rather simplistic push-pull paradigm of migration, Margolis offers a variation on the same theme. Indeed, hers is a case study of people whose "rising expectations in the sending country brought on by increased levels of education and media exposure to consumer patterns in advanced industrial states" contributed to their decision to go abroad. They seek greener pastures, some right in the heart of the Big Apple where they can explore new horizons and make money, too. General readers, upper-division undergraduates, and above. P. I. Rose Smith College
Copyright American Library Association, used with permission.
Review by Choice Review
