Samantha Nogueira Joyce offers another rich, readable, and insightful analysis of telenovela representations of Blackness in Brazil. The book advances an intersectional approach that not only illuminates how race and gender interconnect in media texts, but also highlights how online activism can lead to significant shifts in patterns of representation. This is a must-read to anyone interested in media and racial politics in Brazil.
— Mauro P. Porto, Tulane University
Samantha Nogueira Joyce explores the complexities of race and racism in Brazilian telenovelas, highlighting the contextual forces that shape the currents of racism in Brazilian society in two points in time and two telenovelas. It is an insightful and well-crafted work that expands our understanding of media representations, racism, and telenovelas in Brazil.
— Antonio C. La Pastina, Texas A&M University
With a focus on the telenovela, Segundo Sol, Samantha Nogueira Joyce deftly illuminates how telenovelas work to maintain racial hierarchies. Afro-Brazilians in Telenovelas: Social, Political, and Economic Realities is a well-researched exploration of how conflicting ideas about racial representation are essential to how Brazil imagines itself. By deconstructing dominant racial and gender narratives of Blackness, Joyce dispels enduring myths of racial democracy. Studying the digital agency of audiences alongside government policy and telenovela production practices, the book offers a critical lens to rethinking the role of telenovelas in social transformation. This is a very important and readable addition to scholarship in Black cultural studies, media studies, and Latin American studies.
— Jasmine Mitchell, SUNY Old Westbury