A coming-of-age story set in Angola in the period leading up to the colony’s independence, Saudade focuses on a Goan immigrant family caught between complicity in Portuguese rule, and their dependence on the Angolans who are their servants. The title (saudade means ‘melancholy’ in Portuguese) speaks to the longing for homeland that haunts its characters, and especially the young girl who is the book’s protagonist and narrator. Suneeta Peres da Costa’s novella captures with intense lyricism the difficult relationship between the daughter and her mother, and the ways in which their intimate world opens up questions about domestic violence, the legacies of Portuguese slavery, and the end of empire. The young woman’s intellectual awakening unfolds into a growing awareness of the lies of colonialism, and the violent political ruptures that ultimately lead to her father’s death, and their exile. ‘[Her] voice is unique: neither childlike nor grownup, but instead by turns gravely articulate, wildly poetic, and hilariously original…a haunting and magical vision of childhood.’ Austin Chronicle

Beside me, on the stone steps of this quiet courtyard, there is a lame man - the sweeper. He is so thin that the end of his belt comes back around to its buckle. He's trying to feed a puppy the rest of his lunch. He reminds me that we all need something to need us, and that maybe that's why we Westerners, who are so independent, mostly fail to understand family in this way, and need to come up with things like 'quality time' to justify such a base need. Everyone here asks if my family is in Sri Lanka, if that's why I've come here. When I say no, they're back in Canada, this confuses them. It's a black mark against me. Why would I leave them? I am a selfish person. (I am.) The Portuguese word saudade has no direct English translation. In its simplest sense, it describes a feeling of longing for something that is now gone, and may yet return, but in all likelihood can never be recaptured. In Saudade , traveller Anik See traces her attempts to reclaim this loss in a series of informal essays that take us from the salt plains of Wood Buffalo National Park and the mountains of British Columbia to the fishing ports of Sri Lanka and the rough roads of Tbilisi, Georgia. Whether at a fishfry in the Northwest Territories, at the post-9/11 Canada-US border, on the ultimate road trip through Australia or at a summercarnival in Santiago de Cuba, See is on a continual quest for simplicity, interrogating the perceived distance between privilege and want. Quietly, insistently, these thoughtful essays ask what we might accomplish if we said no to entitlement; if, instead, we used our privilege to help us better understand human nature. Throughout this psychogeographic diary, crowded with rituals of faith, death and renewal, See asks, again and again, 'How much will be enough?' Praise for Saudade : 'Anik See's Saudade is often disturbingly brilliant. It reassures me that much of our experience of the world is still undescribed. Saudade is fresh and utterly original.' - Jim Harrison 'See's meditations on loss, technology, design, and borders are like long-exposure photographs: richly textured, dreamy, observant of even the slightest movement.' - GLOSS Magazine

Inspired by her mother's ancestry and described by Brimhall as "autobiomythography," Saudade explores the myths within an Amazon River town.

"[Brimhall] allows us brief visions, glimpses, of experiences more lush and raw than our own."—The Rumpus "With a stunning mastery of metaphor, linguistic precision, and a soulful determined vision, Brimhall's work reveals an artist tuned to the significance of everyday experience."—Dorianne Laux "Saudade" is a Portuguese word referring to a quality of longing that has no direct translation into English. Inspired by stories from her Brazilian-born mother, Traci Brimhall's third collection—a lush and startling "autobiomythography"—is reminiscent of the rich imaginative worlds of Latin American magical realists. Set in the Brazilian Amazon, Saudade is one part ghost story, one part revival, and is populated by a colorful cast of characters and a recurring chorus of irreverent Marias. From "Incomplete Address to the Lord": When I found that mass of scales and muscle, saw one anaconda twist around another, watched a split tongue flick the air, choosing me, black as the devil's own and twice as thick, males coiled around the female tickling her back with their spurs, I knew I'd give anything to be her. I felt the pulse in my eyelid, tasted the ants that paraded over my plantains at night, drank all the darkness out of my wife's breast. Lord, I'd rather be crazy than broken . . . Traci Brimhall is the author of two previous poetry collections. She earned her PhD from Western Michigan University and is Assistant Professor of Creative Writing at Kansas State University. She lives in Manhattan, Kansas.

The Brazilian Portuguese idea of saudade is often translated as a powerful relative of nostalgia, which brings together love and grief, a melancholia and a longing focused on a memory, an absence. Saudade in Brazilian Cinema looks specifically at how this emotion is imagined on the screen. Analyzing over sixty years of Brazilian cinema, Jack A. Draper III uses the idea of saudade to create an analytical framework within the field of emotion studies. Draper places insights on saudade on screen in dialogue with theoretical studies of emotion and affect as well as film theory. The result is a new way of understanding saudade and the representation of emotion in twentieth and twenty-first century Brazilian cinema.

Have you ever felt at a loss for words? Like there wasnt a word invented for the situation or emotion you were experiencing? That was exactly how I felt. After you were gone there was nothing I could say to express the way I felt. Empty? Broken? Hollow? None of those words began to describe what was going on inside my heart. People say all wounds heal with time.That was not my experience, as time passed the longing for you became more intense. I was sure something was wrong with me. How could I love you when you were not even there? When I wasnt even sure of your existence? I stumbled on a word that I never heard of before. It was a silly article that popped up while I was doing research online. Saudade: The Untranslatable Word Everyone Sings About. I was intrigued by this and as a teacher of a language wanted to know more. It turned out it is a Portuguese word that is defined as a melancholy nostalgia. There are many different definitions for this word there was one that I thought was most appropriate. The love that remains.

A major addition to the literature of poetry, Edward Hirsch’s sparkling new work is a compilation of forms, devices, groups, movements, isms, aesthetics, rhetorical terms, and folklore—a book that all readers, writers, teachers, and students of poetry will return to over and over. Hirsch has delved deeply into the poetic traditions of the world, returning with an inclusive, international compendium. Moving gracefully from the bards of ancient Greece to the revolutionaries of Latin America, from small formal elements to large mysteries, he provides thoughtful definitions for the most important poetic vocabulary, imbuing his work with a lifetime of scholarship and the warmth of a man devoted to his art. Knowing how a poem works is essential to unlocking its meaning. Hirsch’s entries will deepen readers’ relationships with their favorite poems and open greater levels of understanding in each new poem they encounter. Shot through with the enthusiasm, authority, and sheer delight that made How to Read a Poem so beloved, A Poet’s Glossary is a new classic.

"[A] glorious, glittery saga of friendship and loss... I read The Air You Breathe in two nights. (One might say I inhaled it.)." --NPR "Echoes of Elena Ferrante resound in this sumptuous saga."--O, The Oprah Magazine "Enveloping...Peebles understands the shifting currents of female friendship, and she writes so vividly about samba that you close the book certain its heroine's voices must exist beyond the page." -People The story of an intense female friendship fueled by affection, envy and pride--and each woman's fear that she would be nothing without the other. Some friendships, like romance, have the feeling of fate. Skinny, nine-year-old orphaned Dores is working in the kitchen of a sugar plantation in 1930s Brazil when in walks a girl who changes everything. Graça, the spoiled daughter of a wealthy sugar baron, is clever, well fed, pretty, and thrillingly ill behaved. Born to wildly different worlds, Dores and Graça quickly bond over shared mischief, and then, on a deeper level, over music. One has a voice like a songbird; the other feels melodies in her soul and composes lyrics to match. Music will become their shared passion, the source of their partnership and their rivalry, and for each, the only way out of the life to which each was born. But only one of the two is destined to be a star. Their intimate, volatile bond will determine each of their fortunes--and haunt their memories. Traveling from Brazil's inland sugar plantations to the rowdy streets of Rio de Janeiro's famous Lapa neighborhood, from Los Angeles during the Golden Age of Hollywood back to the irresistible drumbeat of home, The Air You Breathe unfurls a moving portrait of a lifelong friendship--its unparalleled rewards and lasting losses--and considers what we owe to the relationships that shape our lives.

Claude Levi-Strauss, internationally known as a brilliant and sometimes controversial anthropologist, is also a skilled and sensitive photographer. Saudades do Brasil presents 180 of the more than 3000 photographs Levi-Strauss took in Brazil between 1935 and 1939.

Ten years ago, I started writing this for you. I wrote it for you and only you. Since then, millions of other people have read it, but none have understood it the way you understand it. I set out to find you a long time ago and today, I'm so glad I finally have. Thank you for reading these words.