What happens in Brazil … stays in Brazil

Ebony, May, 2008

As the book jacket blurb says, "[Brazil] is a not-so-new, not-so-secret destination for a growing number of American black men looking for the kind of sex and freedom they say they cannot find with black women." In DON'T BLAME IT ON RIO: THE REAL DEAL BEHIND WHY MEN GO TO BRAZIL FOR SEX (Grand Central Publishing, April 2008), University of Michigan doctoral student Jewel Woods and prize-winning journalist Karen Hunter explore the consequences of this trend for thousands of unsuspecting women. Woods talked about the new book with EBONY magazine.

Q: What led you to write DON'T BLAME IT ON RIO: THE REAL DEAL BEHIND WHY MEN GO TO BRAZIL FOR SEX?

A: The short answer ... is that the book is a response to [a recent] article that originally brought attention to this phenomena. I thought the writer did a excellent job of introducing the topic, but that the article was understandably circumscribed by its length and limited by its lack of exposure and lack of knowledge concerning the complex issues that were involved ... The longer answer ... is obviously embedded in my personal history where I have spent ... several years working on trying to understand this particular phenomena of men traveling overseas to find what they think they can not get in America and from Black women ... So taking a longer view at this question, this is a book that I have been working on all of my adult life because of my interest in men's lives and a belief in men's capacity to change.

Q: Were you surprised by your findings?

A: Initially I was surprised by the scope or scale; simply in terms of how widespread it was. The fact that so many Brothers had been or that so many Brothers had known about it was surprising. However, I became more surprised--and to a large extent this is what the book is all about--about the scope and scale of this phenomena in terms of how deep, penetrating and profound the experiences are to the minds, hearts and imaginations of men. The other thing I was surprised about was the type of alienation and isolation felt by members [of] the Black middle class.

[This and other recent works] on Blacks and Brazil describe the price that African-Americans pay for not just being isolated but also by being selectively incorporated into mainstream society. However, very few works have captured how men that are middle class or professional class deal with this type of alienation differently from middle class or professional women.

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Q: Some of the stories seem apocryphal. You write, for example, "Brazil sets the stage for Black men to go out and literally enact hip-hop masculinity and sexuality in ways that are influenced by the images that other Black men provide ... " Can you explain this more?

A: In terms of the hip-hop, much of hip-hop acts like a musical form of Viagra. Just like Viagra, hip-hop gets men up/erect and ready to perform in a certain way. The chapter on hip-hop was about how hip-hop frames men's experiences, particularly younger African-American men ... One of the things that I don't go into in the book and which may not be clear is the profound distinctions men make among each other based on age differences. Men that arc older and/or have been traveling to Rio for years--sometimes decades-feel that younger men are bringing their own culture. As a result there is a lot of bitterness and resentment among older men who feel like younger guys arc messing things up.

If you mean by "apocryphal" of doubtful authorship or authenticity, I would state that there is actually no need to make up stories about what men say or do in Rio. Hundreds of thousands of men travel overseas each year to participate in these types of experiences. African-American men are simply joining the long ranks of men that travel overseas and have intercourse with a set of ideas about manhood and masculinity. More importantly, men are very good at telling their own stories about their experiences. It happens all the time in male culture. Contrary to the myth that only women gossip, men talk all the time. Part of the problem is that most people--including most professionals--are not willing, interested or competent to listen to men's narratives or to provide an interpretive lens for explaining what they are actually saying ... What is usually hard for people to believe (more women than men) is that there is nothing in the U.S. that approximates what men experience overseas. There is nothing like a terma in the U.S. or Club Help [in Rio]. People can't imagine one man having sex with more than seven different women in one day.

Q: Falling for these stereotypes of Black men (described above) makes Brazilian women appear naive and vapid. It also makes Black men appear self-loathing. Can you explain the social dynamic and interplay going on here?

A: In this culture, what men would not want to feel like Will Smith or Puffy? Or I should say what they imagine these men feel like. One of the questions this book probes is whether it is hard to believe that men would respond so powerfully and perfectly to being the subject of desire as opposed to feeling like objects of success. Stated differently, is it hard to believe that women want to look like Beyonce or be desired like Halle Berry? Men want to feel like Denzel mad that is not a stereotype. It is more wish fulfillment where men seek to acquire a level of identification and a sense of affirmation that is restricted to a small few.