My Romans (new cover)

Joys and Sorrows of a German Educator in Brazil

German Ina von Binzen (or Ulla von Eck, her pseudonym) spent three years between Rio de Janeiro and São Paulo. At 22, hired to educate seven of the twelve children of a family in the interior of Rio de Janeiro, she worked at a girls' school, in the home of a traditional São Paulo family, and on a coffee farm in the interior of the province. Through a series of letters written to her friend Grete between 1881 and 1883, in which she combines literary quality with keen observation, von Binzer provides us with rare insights into life in our country in the second half of the 19th century. These are reflections on a wide range of issues, such as slavery and abolition; the education of wealthy Brazilian children contrasted with the rigidity of Germanic customs; the festivities she could not understand in this country so different from her own, such as a Carnival that drenched every passerby in water and cassava flour; her initial dislocation in Brazil, which led her to vent her feelings, despite recognizing the kindness of our people and the beauty of our country; the longing she felt for her homeland, with its customs and traditions that were hers and which she could not replace with others—which were so often not accepted or understood by her.

An epistolary novel, a portrait of a monarchist Brazil, and a source of discussion about women, Os meus romanos has been discovered by diverse readers since its first Brazilian edition in 1956. Loved or not, these German letters are, without a doubt, fundamental to understanding a Brazil of other times – which says a lot about the homeland we have become.