Atlantic Islander
09-02-2013, 11:53 PM
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In Pursuit of Their Dreams - A History of Azorean Immigration to the United States
Jerry Williams’ history of Azorean immigration to the United States offers us valuable insight into the experience and culture of Portuguese immigrants and their descendents. This account fills a major gap in American immigration history and gives us a comprehensive overview of how Portuguese-Americans–now numbering close to a million people–have come to constitute a vibrant and highly visible presence within southeastern New England, the areas around San Francisco and San Diego, Hawaii, and the New Jersey/New York metropolitan area. Even though Azorean immigrants all came from similar cultural and social backgrounds, Williams shows how regionally specific opportunity structures and social hierarchies have contributed to significant differences within the Portuguese-American experience.
Starting with the whaling routes that first connected the mid-Atlantic archipelago with the ports of call in New England and California in the early 1800s, Williams lays out the complex relationship between the Azores and the US that has continued into the present. We learn how particular patterns of poverty, overpopulation and social inequality in the Azores pushed large numbers of the islands’ inhabitants to leave their homes in search of better opportunities for themselves and their children. He tells the story of how the early whalers who jumped ship in New Bedford, San Francisco, or Hawaii were followed by kin and fellow villagers who had heard of plentiful jobs in New England’s textile mills, gold and land in California, or agricultural work on Hawaiian plantations. Williams’ account allows us to understand the importance of family and community connections throughout the immigrants’ arduous transition from peasant life to industrial society.
- JERRY R. WILLIAMS is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at California State Univeristy, Chico. He is the author of And Yet They Come: Portuguese Immigration from the Azores to the United States, an earlier version of the present volume. He has participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Americans with Dual Cultural Heritages.
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Land of Milk and Money - A Novel
A Portuguese immigrant family falls apart when the matriarch’s death leaves their dairy-farm legacy up for grabs
Land of Milk and Money tells the story of the Francisco family, Portuguese immigrants who build a prosperous California dairy farm. With their growing success, plans to return to the Old Country fall by the wayside, and the legacy of the older generation becomes a source of contention among descendants competing to inherit herds of cattle and tracts of farmland. As matriarch, Teresa had devoted her life to keeping the peace in her big family. But when she dies long-simmering resentments and feuds burst into the open—and into the courtroom. Teresa, however, had seen it all coming, and her will contains a few surprises.
Endorsements:
“In Land of Milk and Money, Barcellos mines rich family history with the Portuguese immigrant experience in California’s Central Valley to create a full-blooded tale that readers will find insightful, rewarding, and entertaining.”—John Lescroart, author of The Hunter
“One of the West’s singular migrations—from the Azores to California’s Great Central Valley—is given faces and voices in Land of Milk and Money. A must read.”
—Gerald Haslam, author of The Great Central Valley
- ANTHONY BARCELLOS grew up speaking Portuguese on his grandfather’s dairy farm in Porterville, California. He has since learned English. He lives in Davis, California, and teaches math at American River College in Sacramento.
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Land, As Far As the Eye Can See - Portuguese in the Old West
An entertaining and innovative account of pioneering Portuguese men and women who settled the vast frontier of the American West
This book weaves the tale of enterprising Portuguese immigrants into the wider story of the Old West. Its biographies range from detailed profiles of those who stood out to glimpses of obscure yet important settlers. Through the deeds of these Portuguese pioneers, Land, As Far As the Eye Can See provides a history of the opening, conquest, and development of the American West.
Endorsements:
“The Portuguese pioneered everywhere on the western frontier. Their stories…have never been told, that is, not until this sensitive, pathbreaking book.”—Richard Orsi, Editor, California History
“Unique, then, and pioneering too, the book is also magnetically readable throughout.”—Frederick Nolan, author of The West of Billy the Kid
- DONALD WARRIN is an historian at the Regional Oral History Office, UC Berkeley. His most recent book is So Ends This Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling, 1765–1927. GEOFFREY L. GOMES is a retired instructor of history at Chabot College.
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The Marriage of the Portuguese
“From the haunting title poem to the hard-won wisdom of the concluding section, we see Pereira as a consummate word magician whose easy banter and fresh language constantly defy our expectation with deft leaps and risks.”—David Oliveira
Offering the dilemma of the hyphenated American, these poems speak from a place of beauty between two worlds, the old and the new
In this newly expanded edition of The Marriage of the Portuguese, first published in 1978, Sam Pereira encounters the world as it exists now, three decades later, and weaves poetry around his signature realization of sometimes painful, sometimes joyous experience. Often cynical and at times somewhat risqué, this is the work of a man who has lived fully those three additional decades and survived them handily, having learned to accept life’s uncertainties—indeed to embrace them—even as he recognizes that knowledge is at best fleeting.
In poems evocative of times past, The Marriage of the Portuguese is replete with images of seas both literal and metaphorical—the earth’s oceans and the troubled waters of the emotions. Throughout, he maintains the dignity his ancestors demanded, while intentionally courting risks that are inescapable. This is the work of someone fully experiencing what it means to be human in a society that continually threatens that humanity. Caught up in familial complexities inherent in being third-generation Portuguese in America, Pereira’s theme remains one of positive belief—even if not strictly the belief of his ancestors, nevertheless belief true to his rich Portuguese heritage.
Endorsements:
“The poems, original and new, are fresh, timely, and subversive-noir adventures set in whiskey-light and bloodlust, measured by deft moments of surrealism and surprising, focused imagery. . . . Sam Pereira is an essential voice in American poetry.”—M. L. Williams
Praise for A Café in Boca:
“I’ve been an admirer of Sam Pereira’s poetry for thirty years now, marvelling constantly at his intelligence and humor, his bravado and high style. Sam Pereira’s poems are often both disarming and alarming, or perhaps, first alarming, and then tenderly disarming.”—David St. John
From the Book:
Villanelle for an Old Man
The cross means nothing right now;
The world insists on shadows at 10 paces.
No one here seems to know how.
Father, for instance, with wrinkled brow,
Always wearing the saddest of faces;
The cross means nothing right now.
His childhood was spent tending cows
In the valley’s open, clean spaces.
No one here seems to know how,
But his mother watched from a window,
As he fed corn, with molasses traces.
The cross means nothing right now.
He’d often walk with the plow,
Wet cow shit staining his laces;
No one here seems to know how.
He’d craved standing on a ship’s bow
In the Atlantic’s holiest graces.
The cross means nothing right now.
No one here seems to know how.
- SAM PEREIRA’s books include Brittle Water and A Café in Boca. He lives and teaches in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
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Move Over, Scopes - and Other Writings
Richly-textured narratives of Portuguese-American life, mixing culture politics with arch playfulness.
Move Over, Scopes and Other Writings both extends Julian Silva’s richly-textured portrait of Portuguese-American community life in his narrative diptych, Distant Music, and enlarges it to include subjects as varied as backbiting London theatre has-beens (“The Waxworks Show”), a final pilgrimage to the Brontë parsonage (“A Visit to Haworth”), and recollections of a Japanese-American babysitter interned following Pearl Harbor (“Kimi”). As always, Silva is fully attentive to descriptive detail and apt choice of metaphor—nowhere more so than in recalling livestock being raised and dispatched in “Coming to Terms with the Facts of Animal Life.”
The novella Move Over, Scopes, however, does it all, as Henry Ramos attempts to mollify fellow Portuguese-American Catholics—led by his own wife Louise—outraged over Estelle Dobson teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Twists and turns include machinations of a hotly contested School Board election and the need to resist Miss Dobson’s seductive appeal. At a time when Creationism may be making a come-back, Move Over, Scopes could not be more timely.
Endorsements:
“No other American writer of his generation is nearly as urbane as Julian Silva—courteously and compassionately accepting of human fallibility and the messiness of love and death. He glides from gentle mockery to whiplash irony, an intrepid votary at flesh-and-blood altars, embracing the plight of outcasts, the insulted and the injured.”—Alexander Blackburn, former editor of the University of Colorado's Writers’ Forum
- JULIAN SILVA is the author of the novel The Gunnysack Castle. His short fiction has appeared in Writer’s Forum, Kansas Quarterly, Cosmopolitan. He lives in San Francisco.
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Portuguese-Americans and Contemporary Civic Culture in Massachusetts
A collected volume on the political perspectives of Portuguese-Americans in Massachusetts that examines attitudes to such key issues as education and foreign language instruction, the economy and access to jobs and mobility, and a range of other social issues such as immigration policy, abortion, and school prayer.
- CLYDE W. BARROW received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1984. Dr. Barrow specializes in political economy and public policy. He is currently a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and has served as Director of the institution's Center for Policy Analysis since 1993.
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Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature
Characterized as “the silent minority,” the Portuguese have had a varied and checkered presence in American literature. Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature materially enhances our understanding of a field that until now only a handful of readers had noticed. Ranging from considerations of nineteenth– and twentieth–century canonical writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Edith Wharton, to present-day Portuguese-Americans such as Julian Silva, Frank X. Gaspar, Katherine Vaz, and Charles Reis Felix, Reinaldo Silva applies recent theories of ethnicity and race to examine cultural and historical realities as well as authorial intentions, both conscious and unconscious. In so doing, he provides students of Portuguese-American culture and history valuable guidance toward a more comprehensive understanding of the place the Portuguese have occupied in American literature.
- Born in Portugal in 1961, REINALDO SILVA immigrated to America in 1967 at age 6, settling in Newark, New Jersey. He was educated in both the United States and Portugal and holds dual citizenship. After completing undergraduate studies at the University of Coimbra in 1985, he earned an M.A. in English and American literature at Rutgers University-Newark in 1982 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 1998. He has lectured at Rutgers, NYU, NJIT and Seton Hall, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Aveiro in Portugal. His teaching and research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and contemporary ethnic literatures, with a special focus on Portuguese-American writers. He has published numerous articles and encyclopedia entries in American journals.
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Sixty Acres and a Barn - A Novel
A western, agrarian novel that conjures the world of the small dairy farms of California and the Portuguese immigrants who worked them
Sixty Acres and a Barn tells the captivating coming-of-age story of Luis Sarmento, an immigrant from the Azores who finds in America tolerance, prosperity, and emotional fulfillment. This fascinating slice of immigrant life in California dairy farming explores in lyrical, realistic, and insightful prose the obstacles faced by those who live in insular enclaves between cultures. Sixty Acres and a Barn will appeal to readers interested in Portuguese American literature, ethnic literature, immigrant literature, California regional literature, and dairy farms.
Endorsements:
“Lewis’ style and quality of the narrative is most refreshing. Some of his descriptive passages, in the pellucid simplicity and rich imagery, ring with the lyricism of poetry.”—New York Times Book Review
“It is hoped that Mr. Lewis will inspire other descendants of Camoens . . . to take up the pen, to explore and relate the story of the Portuguese pioneers in California.”—San Francisco Chronicle
- ALFRED LEWIS (1902–1977), born on the mid-Atlantic island of Flores, immigrated to California in 1922, studied law, and eventually served as a municipal judge in the San Joaquin Valley. He is the author of Home Is an Island. FRANK F. SOUSA received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture and Professor of Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. DONALD WARRIN specializes in the history and literature of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants in the United States at the Regional Oral History Office at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
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So Ends This Day -The Portuguese in American Whaling, 1765–1927
“It is gratifying that So Ends This Day not only undertakes a grand historical overview of the Islands’ involvement in the blubber-hunting business, but also characterizes many of the individual personalities, events, circumstances, and anecdotes that reveal the complexity of the whaling industry as a whole and the human character of Azorean and Cape Verdean involvement in it.”—Stuart M. Frank, author of Dictionary of Scrimshaw Artists and More Scrimshaw Artists: A Sequel Center
Fascinating history of the American whaling industry highlighting the role of its Portuguese participants.
In the first half of the nineteenth century whaling was one of the young American nation’s most important industries, providing lubricants and illumination as well as baleen, the plastic of its day. So Ends This Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling, 1765–1927 traces the history of the American whaling industry from its seventeenth century beginnings in Massachusetts and Long Island to its demise in the third decade of the twentieth century, while highlighting the role of its Portuguese participants. Their story begins with Joseph Swazey who, in 1765, returned to Martha’s Vineyard from an Atlantic whaling voyage; and it terminates with the aborted voyage of Capt. Joseph F. Edwards aboard the John R. Manta in 1927. From a few random crew members in the latter half of the 18th century, these men from the Portuguese Atlantic islands of the Azores and Cape Verde came to dominate the industry in its final decades. Their participation would ultimately determine the principal settlement patterns of the Portuguese in the U.S.: New England, California, and Hawaii. But it led as well to distant communities in such diverse places as Alaska, New Zealand, and the Pacific atolls. It is a story of courage and determination in a far-reaching industry in which many of these individuals advanced to positions of responsibility unparalleled among non-English-speaking immigrants to the United States.
Endorsements:
“Rich with quotations from logs and journals, lavishly illustrated, and replete with never-before-heard stories, So Ends This Day is a valuable, lovingly researched contribution to the history of American whaling. It memorializes the often unacknowledged Portuguese seamen who traveled the world on Yankee whalers, jumped ship in distant places, and brought a touch of colorful romance to colonies like New Zealand.”—Joan Druett, author of In the Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon and Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
“For far too long the Portuguese contribution to American whaling has been relegated to the sidelines of history. This meticulously researched and well-written study puts the emphasis where it rightfully belongs.”—Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
- DONALD WARRIN specializes in the history and literature of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants in the United States. His books include Land, As Far As the Eye Can See: Portuguese in the Old West, written with Geoffrey L. Gomes, which appeared recently as Portugueses no Faroeste: Terra a Perder de Vista, published by Bertrand Editora, Lisbon. He has written as well on the participation of Portuguese from the Azores and Cape Verde islands in American whaling. So Ends This Day greatly expands upon this previous research. After retiring from the faculty at California State University East Bay, in 2003 Warrin became the first Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Hélio and Amélia Pedroso/Luso-American Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He subsequently served as associate director of the Regional Oral History Office at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; and currently continues in that program as a historian.
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Through a Portagee Gate
“Through a Portagee Gate is the story of two men told with novelistic brilliance. Passionate, witty, full of anger, but leavened with equal amounts of hope, it is the most moving biography I’ve encountered in years–and one of the most remarkable autobiographies.”—Llewellyn Howland III, author of The New Bedford Yacht Club: A History
Through a Portagee Gate is both an autobiography and a biography. It gives a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author’s father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915. The narrative reveals a deep desire to escape the confines of the immigrant, ethnic world, while also acknowledging a keen nostalgia about one’s past, a need to remember and recognize those who came before. Felix accomplishes this through unforgettable dialogue and vivid characterizations worthy of Steinbeck—a prose sometimes poignant, at other times hilarious that strips human experience to its bare and powerful elements.
Reviews:
“Reading much like a novel, with its rich detail and emotive content, Through a Portagee Gate offers a profound look into the Portuguese immigrant psyche and the evolution of a post–industrial city.”—Donald Warrin, author of So Ends this Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling 1765–1927 and Land as Far as the Eye Can See: The Portuguese in the Old West
Endorsements:
“Through a Portagee Gate is a plain-spoken, down-to-earth account of an American voyage, rich in fable, anecdote, and wit. Charles Reis Felix writes as boldly as if carving scrimshaw about the soles fixed by this father, a cobbler, and the tread of life upon various nearby souls, including his own.”—Katherine Vaz, author of Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories
“Through a Portagee Gate is a valuable document, a record, a history, and autobiography, a memoir, an elegy. When readers encounter Felix’s carefully drawn dramatic scenes, his exacting prose, and his deeply human people, they understand that he is engaged in a work of art. Felix is a writer possessed of humor, wit, and a great heart.”—Frank X. Gaspar, author of Stealing Fatima and Leaving Pico
From the Book:
Chapter 64: His Father Again.
I knew almost nothing of my father’s childhood. I knew he had been poor in Portugal. I knew he had gone to work at the age of eight in a sardine cannery. The sardine cans ended up covered with olive oil. His job was to dip the can in sawdust and then, with a brush, clean the can off. He demonstrated his brushing technique to me. I knew his father had been a cobbler.
That was about all I knew of his early life. He never talked about Portugal. It was as if his life had started when he came to America. Whatever happened before that had been erased from memory.
When I was growing up, I did not realize that all his stories were about America and that there were none about Portugal. But as I got older, I took note of the omission and felt it was rather odd. I wanted to know about those early days, about his father, about his family, about his experiences. I knew that he had an inner reserve that would not be breached by direct frontal assault. So I tried to entice him into reminiscing by priming the pump with artfully designed innocent questions. And I waited for the proper moment, when his stomach was full and he was relaxed.
He looked at me blankly. He never heard me. He always talked about something else. Once when I would not acquiesce in his sudden deafness and pestered him, he turned on me in exasperation and said sharply, "What do you want to know that for?"
I made no headway, so eventually I gave up. He simply did not want to talk about it. But one day, he did talk. He was in his eighties then. His voice was husky with age.
I was home, visiting from California. It was a balmy summer day. I spent the afternoon at my aunts’ house a few blocks away. My mother and my sister had gone out on a duty call, admiring someone’s new baby. My father was left home alone.
It was late afternoon when I walked into the house. My mother and sister were still out. The house was absolutely quiet. There was no sound. I couldn’t remember it ever being that quiet before. He was sitting at the table. He sat in shadows. There were no lights on. The sun was sinking behind the New Bedford Cotton Mill. A fresh breeze was coming through an open window and slightly moving the curtains.
I sat down beside him. He didn’t seem aware of me. His face was set in utter desolation. He was a man beyond reach, beyond love and family, beyond human relationships, alone, the last man on earth. Was he contemplating human destiny? Was he aware of some level of existence that could only horrify?
"My mother die when I was eight," he said. "We were very poor. I had many a meal of just a piece of stale bread, nothing on it, and a cup of coffee. But not coffee like here, with milk and sugar. Just black coffee, very strong. That was the whole meal, bread and coffee.
"But my mother die. My father married again, a younger woman. She was not old enough to be my mother, more like a big sister. But she did not care for me. Or for my two brothers. ‘Brats,’ she called us. Well, I can’t blame her. Soon she had babies of her own and she had her hands full taking care of them. You cannot expect her to take care of somebody else’s kids.
"So she was always yelling at me. She didn’t want me around. One day she said to me, ‘What are you always hanging around the house for? You big sissy!’
"So I took to staying away, to avoid her. I would leave early in the morning and come back in the dark. Sneak in to my bed.
"But my stepmother–I never got a kind word from her–not even once.
"Then I took it into my head to come to America, so I began saving money to that end. I had a jar under my bed, and when I got a coin or two, I would put them in the jar. So I saved and many months later, I had the jar almost full. One day I reached under the bed for the jar and could not find it. It had been moved. I got on my hands and knees and looked under the bed and found it. It was empty. I took the jar to my father and said, ‘What’s this?’ "‘Yes, I took it,’ he said. ‘I need the money more than you do. You know, it is customary, when the father gets old, the son gives him a kick in the ass. Well, I’m going to give you a kick in the ass first.’
"But eventually I had enough money to pay for my passage over here. I was to take a train to Lisbon, where the boat would be. My last day there, I packed my valise and my father walk with me to the train station.
"He seemed sad.
"‘I don’t think I’ll ever see you again,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever come back here again.’
"I looked at him but I didn’t say anything."
Then he stopped talking. Just a few brief sentences. That was all I had of his early life and that was all I would ever have.
- CHARLES REIS FELIX was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Portuguese immigrant parents. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1941 to 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. After the war he received a B.A. in history from Stanford University and became an elementary school teacher. He is the author of Crossing the Sauer, an account of his experience as a combat infantryman in World War II; Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934; and Tony: A New England Boyhood. He lives in Northern California.
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Tony - A New England Boyhood
A riveting autobiographical novel about Tony Alfama's boyhood adventures growing up in the industrial city of Gaw (New Bedford)
Tony: A New England Boyhood is an autobiographical novel about growing up in Gaw (New Bedford), Massachusetts in the 1930s much in the same way that Thomas Bailey Aldrich's celebrated boyhood novel, The Story of a Bad Boy, recounts his adventures growing up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. But there are sharp differences between the two novels. Instead of a Yankee in a small town, we have a Portuguese boy, Tony Alfama, in an industrial city. Felix presents a rounded-out picture of Tony. You see Tony at home with his mother. You see him with the gang on the street. You see him at school. You see him looking for work in the last chapter. But most of all you see him with his best friend Lommy as they explore the city, doing things that require no money: watching a baseball game, watching girls bowl at the bowling alley, watching girls sunbathe at Lindamar Beach, watching the vaudeville acts on a Saturday night from the doorway of Cozy's Café, watching the hula-hula dancers and "the only living her-MAW-phro-dite in the world" gives short demonstrations at the carnival. Raging hormones play a major role in the novel. Tony and Lommy are drawn to the eternal magnet of woman. Determined to have a sexual experience, they set out on a quest to find a girl or woman who will accommodate them. When they finally find her lying on the sand of Lindamar Beach one dark night, it does not end the way they had expected.
With unblinking honesty, Felix examines a life lived. He recaptures a time and place in history that is receding ever more distant from us. The argument could be made that the second main character in the novel is the city of Gaw itself. Despite his seriousness, Felix is playful at times and manages to find humor in many situations.
- CHARLES REIS FELIX was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, one of four children of Portuguese immigrant parents. He attended local public schools and graduated from New Bedford High School in 1941. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1941-43, at which time he was drafted into the US Army. After the war he received his B.A. in history from Stanford University, and became an elementary school teacher. He is married, with two grown children, and lives with his wife Barbara in a cabin among the redwoods of Northern California.
Felix's other publications include Crossing the Sauer (Burford Books), a bestselling account of his experience as a combat infantryman in WWII; Through a Portagee Gate (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author's father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915; and Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934 (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), the story of an election for mayor in a Massachusetts mill town in 1934 as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old Portuguese boy.
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Two Portuguese-American Plays - Amarelo & Through a Portagee Gate
“...as a look into the past, Through a Portagee Gate feels neither sentimental nor syrupy. Its nostalgia is genuine and its characters authentic. It’s a pleasure to see local history theatricalized with such obvious caring. Congratulations!”—New Bedford Standard Times
Mother/son and son/father dynamics are explored in these plays about life decisions, heritage, and identity among immigrant protagonists pursuing the American Dream in New Bedford, Massachusetts
Two Portuguese-American Plays, comprised of Through a Portagee Gate, adapted by Patricia A. Thomas from the Charles Reis Felix memoir of the same name, and Amarelo, by Paulo A. Pereira, dramatize immigrant experience in the mill-town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Each play begins or ends there, along with visits to Escamil, California, or the tiny village of Covoada, on the island of São Miguel, the Azores. Employing contrasting dramatic techniques, both works portray unforgettable protagonics, at once charming and idiosyncratic. In Through a Portagee Gate, the Radio Ensemble at the WNBH studio in downtown New Bedford broadcasts commercials and news stories, taking us on a journey through the twentieth century; in Amarelo, “Man” poses at the explorer Gonçalo Velho, and others, as he propels the story forward through time. These plays are alive with humor, wit and sincerity drawn from the human experience. Through a Portagee Gate, the play, was commissioned by the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Both plays were sponsored for regional performances by the Center and produced by Culture*Park Theatre of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Reviews:
“The name in Portuguese means yellow, but . . . Amarelo, by Paulo Pereira, is pure gold.”—Providence Journal
Endorsements:
“Both plays dramatize the epic nature of immigrant assimilation with such heart and humor that, while the specific textures of New Bedford anchor these plays as capsules of a cultural moment, the dramatic action is universal to any audience with roots, namely, all of us. Pereira and Thomas excel at staging the uniquely American experience of negotiating one’s integrity when pulled by the paradoxes of immigrant identity. These are the types of plays that have tableaux that linger well after the curtain falls.”—Tom Grady, playwright, author of American Cocktail
- PATRICIA A. THOMAS is a theatre director, teacher, writer and producer who began her career in theatre in the 1980s as a company member at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. She has worked internationally as a theatre director and teacher. In Boston, she wrote and adapted plays with young people, including Love & Mosquitoes, at The Teather Offensive, and Island of the Beholder, at the Boston Center for the Arts. Thomas is co-funder and Artistic Director of Culture*Park Theatre and Performing Arts Collaborative in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she now resides. PAULO A. PEREIRA was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He earned a degree in Theater Arts and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, he was involved in numerous productions as an actor, director, producer, and playwright. Amarelo, his first full-length play, opened in New York City in 1998. More recently, Amarelo was performed at UMass Dartmouth, produced by Culture*Park and sponsored by the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture. He resides in Merrimack, New Hampshire, with his wife Leah and their children.
In Pursuit of Their Dreams - A History of Azorean Immigration to the United States
Jerry Williams’ history of Azorean immigration to the United States offers us valuable insight into the experience and culture of Portuguese immigrants and their descendents. This account fills a major gap in American immigration history and gives us a comprehensive overview of how Portuguese-Americans–now numbering close to a million people–have come to constitute a vibrant and highly visible presence within southeastern New England, the areas around San Francisco and San Diego, Hawaii, and the New Jersey/New York metropolitan area. Even though Azorean immigrants all came from similar cultural and social backgrounds, Williams shows how regionally specific opportunity structures and social hierarchies have contributed to significant differences within the Portuguese-American experience.
Starting with the whaling routes that first connected the mid-Atlantic archipelago with the ports of call in New England and California in the early 1800s, Williams lays out the complex relationship between the Azores and the US that has continued into the present. We learn how particular patterns of poverty, overpopulation and social inequality in the Azores pushed large numbers of the islands’ inhabitants to leave their homes in search of better opportunities for themselves and their children. He tells the story of how the early whalers who jumped ship in New Bedford, San Francisco, or Hawaii were followed by kin and fellow villagers who had heard of plentiful jobs in New England’s textile mills, gold and land in California, or agricultural work on Hawaiian plantations. Williams’ account allows us to understand the importance of family and community connections throughout the immigrants’ arduous transition from peasant life to industrial society.
- JERRY R. WILLIAMS is Professor Emeritus in the Department of Geography at California State Univeristy, Chico. He is the author of And Yet They Come: Portuguese Immigration from the Azores to the United States, an earlier version of the present volume. He has participated in a National Endowment for the Humanities seminar on Americans with Dual Cultural Heritages.
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Land of Milk and Money - A Novel
A Portuguese immigrant family falls apart when the matriarch’s death leaves their dairy-farm legacy up for grabs
Land of Milk and Money tells the story of the Francisco family, Portuguese immigrants who build a prosperous California dairy farm. With their growing success, plans to return to the Old Country fall by the wayside, and the legacy of the older generation becomes a source of contention among descendants competing to inherit herds of cattle and tracts of farmland. As matriarch, Teresa had devoted her life to keeping the peace in her big family. But when she dies long-simmering resentments and feuds burst into the open—and into the courtroom. Teresa, however, had seen it all coming, and her will contains a few surprises.
Endorsements:
“In Land of Milk and Money, Barcellos mines rich family history with the Portuguese immigrant experience in California’s Central Valley to create a full-blooded tale that readers will find insightful, rewarding, and entertaining.”—John Lescroart, author of The Hunter
“One of the West’s singular migrations—from the Azores to California’s Great Central Valley—is given faces and voices in Land of Milk and Money. A must read.”
—Gerald Haslam, author of The Great Central Valley
- ANTHONY BARCELLOS grew up speaking Portuguese on his grandfather’s dairy farm in Porterville, California. He has since learned English. He lives in Davis, California, and teaches math at American River College in Sacramento.
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Land, As Far As the Eye Can See - Portuguese in the Old West
An entertaining and innovative account of pioneering Portuguese men and women who settled the vast frontier of the American West
This book weaves the tale of enterprising Portuguese immigrants into the wider story of the Old West. Its biographies range from detailed profiles of those who stood out to glimpses of obscure yet important settlers. Through the deeds of these Portuguese pioneers, Land, As Far As the Eye Can See provides a history of the opening, conquest, and development of the American West.
Endorsements:
“The Portuguese pioneered everywhere on the western frontier. Their stories…have never been told, that is, not until this sensitive, pathbreaking book.”—Richard Orsi, Editor, California History
“Unique, then, and pioneering too, the book is also magnetically readable throughout.”—Frederick Nolan, author of The West of Billy the Kid
- DONALD WARRIN is an historian at the Regional Oral History Office, UC Berkeley. His most recent book is So Ends This Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling, 1765–1927. GEOFFREY L. GOMES is a retired instructor of history at Chabot College.
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The Marriage of the Portuguese
“From the haunting title poem to the hard-won wisdom of the concluding section, we see Pereira as a consummate word magician whose easy banter and fresh language constantly defy our expectation with deft leaps and risks.”—David Oliveira
Offering the dilemma of the hyphenated American, these poems speak from a place of beauty between two worlds, the old and the new
In this newly expanded edition of The Marriage of the Portuguese, first published in 1978, Sam Pereira encounters the world as it exists now, three decades later, and weaves poetry around his signature realization of sometimes painful, sometimes joyous experience. Often cynical and at times somewhat risqué, this is the work of a man who has lived fully those three additional decades and survived them handily, having learned to accept life’s uncertainties—indeed to embrace them—even as he recognizes that knowledge is at best fleeting.
In poems evocative of times past, The Marriage of the Portuguese is replete with images of seas both literal and metaphorical—the earth’s oceans and the troubled waters of the emotions. Throughout, he maintains the dignity his ancestors demanded, while intentionally courting risks that are inescapable. This is the work of someone fully experiencing what it means to be human in a society that continually threatens that humanity. Caught up in familial complexities inherent in being third-generation Portuguese in America, Pereira’s theme remains one of positive belief—even if not strictly the belief of his ancestors, nevertheless belief true to his rich Portuguese heritage.
Endorsements:
“The poems, original and new, are fresh, timely, and subversive-noir adventures set in whiskey-light and bloodlust, measured by deft moments of surrealism and surprising, focused imagery. . . . Sam Pereira is an essential voice in American poetry.”—M. L. Williams
Praise for A Café in Boca:
“I’ve been an admirer of Sam Pereira’s poetry for thirty years now, marvelling constantly at his intelligence and humor, his bravado and high style. Sam Pereira’s poems are often both disarming and alarming, or perhaps, first alarming, and then tenderly disarming.”—David St. John
From the Book:
Villanelle for an Old Man
The cross means nothing right now;
The world insists on shadows at 10 paces.
No one here seems to know how.
Father, for instance, with wrinkled brow,
Always wearing the saddest of faces;
The cross means nothing right now.
His childhood was spent tending cows
In the valley’s open, clean spaces.
No one here seems to know how,
But his mother watched from a window,
As he fed corn, with molasses traces.
The cross means nothing right now.
He’d often walk with the plow,
Wet cow shit staining his laces;
No one here seems to know how.
He’d craved standing on a ship’s bow
In the Atlantic’s holiest graces.
The cross means nothing right now.
No one here seems to know how.
- SAM PEREIRA’s books include Brittle Water and A Café in Boca. He lives and teaches in California’s San Joaquin Valley.
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Move Over, Scopes - and Other Writings
Richly-textured narratives of Portuguese-American life, mixing culture politics with arch playfulness.
Move Over, Scopes and Other Writings both extends Julian Silva’s richly-textured portrait of Portuguese-American community life in his narrative diptych, Distant Music, and enlarges it to include subjects as varied as backbiting London theatre has-beens (“The Waxworks Show”), a final pilgrimage to the Brontë parsonage (“A Visit to Haworth”), and recollections of a Japanese-American babysitter interned following Pearl Harbor (“Kimi”). As always, Silva is fully attentive to descriptive detail and apt choice of metaphor—nowhere more so than in recalling livestock being raised and dispatched in “Coming to Terms with the Facts of Animal Life.”
The novella Move Over, Scopes, however, does it all, as Henry Ramos attempts to mollify fellow Portuguese-American Catholics—led by his own wife Louise—outraged over Estelle Dobson teaching Darwin’s theory of evolution. Twists and turns include machinations of a hotly contested School Board election and the need to resist Miss Dobson’s seductive appeal. At a time when Creationism may be making a come-back, Move Over, Scopes could not be more timely.
Endorsements:
“No other American writer of his generation is nearly as urbane as Julian Silva—courteously and compassionately accepting of human fallibility and the messiness of love and death. He glides from gentle mockery to whiplash irony, an intrepid votary at flesh-and-blood altars, embracing the plight of outcasts, the insulted and the injured.”—Alexander Blackburn, former editor of the University of Colorado's Writers’ Forum
- JULIAN SILVA is the author of the novel The Gunnysack Castle. His short fiction has appeared in Writer’s Forum, Kansas Quarterly, Cosmopolitan. He lives in San Francisco.
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Portuguese-Americans and Contemporary Civic Culture in Massachusetts
A collected volume on the political perspectives of Portuguese-Americans in Massachusetts that examines attitudes to such key issues as education and foreign language instruction, the economy and access to jobs and mobility, and a range of other social issues such as immigration policy, abortion, and school prayer.
- CLYDE W. BARROW received his Ph.D. in Political Science from the University of California, Los Angeles in 1984. Dr. Barrow specializes in political economy and public policy. He is currently a professor at the University of Massachusetts, Dartmouth and has served as Director of the institution's Center for Policy Analysis since 1993.
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Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature
Characterized as “the silent minority,” the Portuguese have had a varied and checkered presence in American literature. Representations of the Portuguese in American Literature materially enhances our understanding of a field that until now only a handful of readers had noticed. Ranging from considerations of nineteenth– and twentieth–century canonical writers such as Hawthorne, Melville, Mark Twain, Jack London, and Edith Wharton, to present-day Portuguese-Americans such as Julian Silva, Frank X. Gaspar, Katherine Vaz, and Charles Reis Felix, Reinaldo Silva applies recent theories of ethnicity and race to examine cultural and historical realities as well as authorial intentions, both conscious and unconscious. In so doing, he provides students of Portuguese-American culture and history valuable guidance toward a more comprehensive understanding of the place the Portuguese have occupied in American literature.
- Born in Portugal in 1961, REINALDO SILVA immigrated to America in 1967 at age 6, settling in Newark, New Jersey. He was educated in both the United States and Portugal and holds dual citizenship. After completing undergraduate studies at the University of Coimbra in 1985, he earned an M.A. in English and American literature at Rutgers University-Newark in 1982 and a Ph.D. from New York University in 1998. He has lectured at Rutgers, NYU, NJIT and Seton Hall, and is currently Assistant Professor of English at the University of Aveiro in Portugal. His teaching and research interests include nineteenth- and twentieth-century American literature and contemporary ethnic literatures, with a special focus on Portuguese-American writers. He has published numerous articles and encyclopedia entries in American journals.
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Sixty Acres and a Barn - A Novel
A western, agrarian novel that conjures the world of the small dairy farms of California and the Portuguese immigrants who worked them
Sixty Acres and a Barn tells the captivating coming-of-age story of Luis Sarmento, an immigrant from the Azores who finds in America tolerance, prosperity, and emotional fulfillment. This fascinating slice of immigrant life in California dairy farming explores in lyrical, realistic, and insightful prose the obstacles faced by those who live in insular enclaves between cultures. Sixty Acres and a Barn will appeal to readers interested in Portuguese American literature, ethnic literature, immigrant literature, California regional literature, and dairy farms.
Endorsements:
“Lewis’ style and quality of the narrative is most refreshing. Some of his descriptive passages, in the pellucid simplicity and rich imagery, ring with the lyricism of poetry.”—New York Times Book Review
“It is hoped that Mr. Lewis will inspire other descendants of Camoens . . . to take up the pen, to explore and relate the story of the Portuguese pioneers in California.”—San Francisco Chronicle
- ALFRED LEWIS (1902–1977), born on the mid-Atlantic island of Flores, immigrated to California in 1922, studied law, and eventually served as a municipal judge in the San Joaquin Valley. He is the author of Home Is an Island. FRANK F. SOUSA received his Ph.D. from the University of California at Santa Barbara. He is the Director of the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture and Professor of Portuguese at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. DONALD WARRIN specializes in the history and literature of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants in the United States at the Regional Oral History Office at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley.
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So Ends This Day -The Portuguese in American Whaling, 1765–1927
“It is gratifying that So Ends This Day not only undertakes a grand historical overview of the Islands’ involvement in the blubber-hunting business, but also characterizes many of the individual personalities, events, circumstances, and anecdotes that reveal the complexity of the whaling industry as a whole and the human character of Azorean and Cape Verdean involvement in it.”—Stuart M. Frank, author of Dictionary of Scrimshaw Artists and More Scrimshaw Artists: A Sequel Center
Fascinating history of the American whaling industry highlighting the role of its Portuguese participants.
In the first half of the nineteenth century whaling was one of the young American nation’s most important industries, providing lubricants and illumination as well as baleen, the plastic of its day. So Ends This Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling, 1765–1927 traces the history of the American whaling industry from its seventeenth century beginnings in Massachusetts and Long Island to its demise in the third decade of the twentieth century, while highlighting the role of its Portuguese participants. Their story begins with Joseph Swazey who, in 1765, returned to Martha’s Vineyard from an Atlantic whaling voyage; and it terminates with the aborted voyage of Capt. Joseph F. Edwards aboard the John R. Manta in 1927. From a few random crew members in the latter half of the 18th century, these men from the Portuguese Atlantic islands of the Azores and Cape Verde came to dominate the industry in its final decades. Their participation would ultimately determine the principal settlement patterns of the Portuguese in the U.S.: New England, California, and Hawaii. But it led as well to distant communities in such diverse places as Alaska, New Zealand, and the Pacific atolls. It is a story of courage and determination in a far-reaching industry in which many of these individuals advanced to positions of responsibility unparalleled among non-English-speaking immigrants to the United States.
Endorsements:
“Rich with quotations from logs and journals, lavishly illustrated, and replete with never-before-heard stories, So Ends This Day is a valuable, lovingly researched contribution to the history of American whaling. It memorializes the often unacknowledged Portuguese seamen who traveled the world on Yankee whalers, jumped ship in distant places, and brought a touch of colorful romance to colonies like New Zealand.”—Joan Druett, author of In the Wake of Madness: The Murderous Voyage of the Whaleship Sharon and Island of the Lost: Shipwrecked at the Edge of the World
“For far too long the Portuguese contribution to American whaling has been relegated to the sidelines of history. This meticulously researched and well-written study puts the emphasis where it rightfully belongs.”—Nathaniel Philbrick, author of In the Heart of the Sea: The Tragedy of the Whaleship Essex and Mayflower: A Story of Courage, Community, and War
- DONALD WARRIN specializes in the history and literature of Portuguese and Cape Verdean immigrants in the United States. His books include Land, As Far As the Eye Can See: Portuguese in the Old West, written with Geoffrey L. Gomes, which appeared recently as Portugueses no Faroeste: Terra a Perder de Vista, published by Bertrand Editora, Lisbon. He has written as well on the participation of Portuguese from the Azores and Cape Verde islands in American whaling. So Ends This Day greatly expands upon this previous research. After retiring from the faculty at California State University East Bay, in 2003 Warrin became the first Visiting Distinguished Professor of the Hélio and Amélia Pedroso/Luso-American Foundation Endowed Chair in Portuguese Studies at the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. He subsequently served as associate director of the Regional Oral History Office at The Bancroft Library, University of California, Berkeley; and currently continues in that program as a historian.
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Through a Portagee Gate
“Through a Portagee Gate is the story of two men told with novelistic brilliance. Passionate, witty, full of anger, but leavened with equal amounts of hope, it is the most moving biography I’ve encountered in years–and one of the most remarkable autobiographies.”—Llewellyn Howland III, author of The New Bedford Yacht Club: A History
Through a Portagee Gate is both an autobiography and a biography. It gives a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author’s father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915. The narrative reveals a deep desire to escape the confines of the immigrant, ethnic world, while also acknowledging a keen nostalgia about one’s past, a need to remember and recognize those who came before. Felix accomplishes this through unforgettable dialogue and vivid characterizations worthy of Steinbeck—a prose sometimes poignant, at other times hilarious that strips human experience to its bare and powerful elements.
Reviews:
“Reading much like a novel, with its rich detail and emotive content, Through a Portagee Gate offers a profound look into the Portuguese immigrant psyche and the evolution of a post–industrial city.”—Donald Warrin, author of So Ends this Day: The Portuguese in American Whaling 1765–1927 and Land as Far as the Eye Can See: The Portuguese in the Old West
Endorsements:
“Through a Portagee Gate is a plain-spoken, down-to-earth account of an American voyage, rich in fable, anecdote, and wit. Charles Reis Felix writes as boldly as if carving scrimshaw about the soles fixed by this father, a cobbler, and the tread of life upon various nearby souls, including his own.”—Katherine Vaz, author of Our Lady of the Artichokes and Other Portuguese-American Stories
“Through a Portagee Gate is a valuable document, a record, a history, and autobiography, a memoir, an elegy. When readers encounter Felix’s carefully drawn dramatic scenes, his exacting prose, and his deeply human people, they understand that he is engaged in a work of art. Felix is a writer possessed of humor, wit, and a great heart.”—Frank X. Gaspar, author of Stealing Fatima and Leaving Pico
From the Book:
Chapter 64: His Father Again.
I knew almost nothing of my father’s childhood. I knew he had been poor in Portugal. I knew he had gone to work at the age of eight in a sardine cannery. The sardine cans ended up covered with olive oil. His job was to dip the can in sawdust and then, with a brush, clean the can off. He demonstrated his brushing technique to me. I knew his father had been a cobbler.
That was about all I knew of his early life. He never talked about Portugal. It was as if his life had started when he came to America. Whatever happened before that had been erased from memory.
When I was growing up, I did not realize that all his stories were about America and that there were none about Portugal. But as I got older, I took note of the omission and felt it was rather odd. I wanted to know about those early days, about his father, about his family, about his experiences. I knew that he had an inner reserve that would not be breached by direct frontal assault. So I tried to entice him into reminiscing by priming the pump with artfully designed innocent questions. And I waited for the proper moment, when his stomach was full and he was relaxed.
He looked at me blankly. He never heard me. He always talked about something else. Once when I would not acquiesce in his sudden deafness and pestered him, he turned on me in exasperation and said sharply, "What do you want to know that for?"
I made no headway, so eventually I gave up. He simply did not want to talk about it. But one day, he did talk. He was in his eighties then. His voice was husky with age.
I was home, visiting from California. It was a balmy summer day. I spent the afternoon at my aunts’ house a few blocks away. My mother and my sister had gone out on a duty call, admiring someone’s new baby. My father was left home alone.
It was late afternoon when I walked into the house. My mother and sister were still out. The house was absolutely quiet. There was no sound. I couldn’t remember it ever being that quiet before. He was sitting at the table. He sat in shadows. There were no lights on. The sun was sinking behind the New Bedford Cotton Mill. A fresh breeze was coming through an open window and slightly moving the curtains.
I sat down beside him. He didn’t seem aware of me. His face was set in utter desolation. He was a man beyond reach, beyond love and family, beyond human relationships, alone, the last man on earth. Was he contemplating human destiny? Was he aware of some level of existence that could only horrify?
"My mother die when I was eight," he said. "We were very poor. I had many a meal of just a piece of stale bread, nothing on it, and a cup of coffee. But not coffee like here, with milk and sugar. Just black coffee, very strong. That was the whole meal, bread and coffee.
"But my mother die. My father married again, a younger woman. She was not old enough to be my mother, more like a big sister. But she did not care for me. Or for my two brothers. ‘Brats,’ she called us. Well, I can’t blame her. Soon she had babies of her own and she had her hands full taking care of them. You cannot expect her to take care of somebody else’s kids.
"So she was always yelling at me. She didn’t want me around. One day she said to me, ‘What are you always hanging around the house for? You big sissy!’
"So I took to staying away, to avoid her. I would leave early in the morning and come back in the dark. Sneak in to my bed.
"But my stepmother–I never got a kind word from her–not even once.
"Then I took it into my head to come to America, so I began saving money to that end. I had a jar under my bed, and when I got a coin or two, I would put them in the jar. So I saved and many months later, I had the jar almost full. One day I reached under the bed for the jar and could not find it. It had been moved. I got on my hands and knees and looked under the bed and found it. It was empty. I took the jar to my father and said, ‘What’s this?’ "‘Yes, I took it,’ he said. ‘I need the money more than you do. You know, it is customary, when the father gets old, the son gives him a kick in the ass. Well, I’m going to give you a kick in the ass first.’
"But eventually I had enough money to pay for my passage over here. I was to take a train to Lisbon, where the boat would be. My last day there, I packed my valise and my father walk with me to the train station.
"He seemed sad.
"‘I don’t think I’ll ever see you again,’ he said. ‘I don’t think you’ll ever come back here again.’
"I looked at him but I didn’t say anything."
Then he stopped talking. Just a few brief sentences. That was all I had of his early life and that was all I would ever have.
- CHARLES REIS FELIX was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, to Portuguese immigrant parents. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1941 to 1943, when he was drafted into the U.S. Army. After the war he received a B.A. in history from Stanford University and became an elementary school teacher. He is the author of Crossing the Sauer, an account of his experience as a combat infantryman in World War II; Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934; and Tony: A New England Boyhood. He lives in Northern California.
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Tony - A New England Boyhood
A riveting autobiographical novel about Tony Alfama's boyhood adventures growing up in the industrial city of Gaw (New Bedford)
Tony: A New England Boyhood is an autobiographical novel about growing up in Gaw (New Bedford), Massachusetts in the 1930s much in the same way that Thomas Bailey Aldrich's celebrated boyhood novel, The Story of a Bad Boy, recounts his adventures growing up in Portsmouth, New Hampshire. But there are sharp differences between the two novels. Instead of a Yankee in a small town, we have a Portuguese boy, Tony Alfama, in an industrial city. Felix presents a rounded-out picture of Tony. You see Tony at home with his mother. You see him with the gang on the street. You see him at school. You see him looking for work in the last chapter. But most of all you see him with his best friend Lommy as they explore the city, doing things that require no money: watching a baseball game, watching girls bowl at the bowling alley, watching girls sunbathe at Lindamar Beach, watching the vaudeville acts on a Saturday night from the doorway of Cozy's Café, watching the hula-hula dancers and "the only living her-MAW-phro-dite in the world" gives short demonstrations at the carnival. Raging hormones play a major role in the novel. Tony and Lommy are drawn to the eternal magnet of woman. Determined to have a sexual experience, they set out on a quest to find a girl or woman who will accommodate them. When they finally find her lying on the sand of Lindamar Beach one dark night, it does not end the way they had expected.
With unblinking honesty, Felix examines a life lived. He recaptures a time and place in history that is receding ever more distant from us. The argument could be made that the second main character in the novel is the city of Gaw itself. Despite his seriousness, Felix is playful at times and manages to find humor in many situations.
- CHARLES REIS FELIX was born in New Bedford, Massachusetts, one of four children of Portuguese immigrant parents. He attended local public schools and graduated from New Bedford High School in 1941. He studied at the University of Michigan from 1941-43, at which time he was drafted into the US Army. After the war he received his B.A. in history from Stanford University, and became an elementary school teacher. He is married, with two grown children, and lives with his wife Barbara in a cabin among the redwoods of Northern California.
Felix's other publications include Crossing the Sauer (Burford Books), a bestselling account of his experience as a combat infantryman in WWII; Through a Portagee Gate (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), a remarkably honest self-portrait and an endearing tribute to the author's father, a Portuguese immigrant cobbler who came to America in 1915; and Da Gama, Cary Grant, and the Election of 1934 (University of Massachusetts Dartmouth), the story of an election for mayor in a Massachusetts mill town in 1934 as seen through the eyes of a ten-year-old Portuguese boy.
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Two Portuguese-American Plays - Amarelo & Through a Portagee Gate
“...as a look into the past, Through a Portagee Gate feels neither sentimental nor syrupy. Its nostalgia is genuine and its characters authentic. It’s a pleasure to see local history theatricalized with such obvious caring. Congratulations!”—New Bedford Standard Times
Mother/son and son/father dynamics are explored in these plays about life decisions, heritage, and identity among immigrant protagonists pursuing the American Dream in New Bedford, Massachusetts
Two Portuguese-American Plays, comprised of Through a Portagee Gate, adapted by Patricia A. Thomas from the Charles Reis Felix memoir of the same name, and Amarelo, by Paulo A. Pereira, dramatize immigrant experience in the mill-town of New Bedford, Massachusetts. Each play begins or ends there, along with visits to Escamil, California, or the tiny village of Covoada, on the island of São Miguel, the Azores. Employing contrasting dramatic techniques, both works portray unforgettable protagonics, at once charming and idiosyncratic. In Through a Portagee Gate, the Radio Ensemble at the WNBH studio in downtown New Bedford broadcasts commercials and news stories, taking us on a journey through the twentieth century; in Amarelo, “Man” poses at the explorer Gonçalo Velho, and others, as he propels the story forward through time. These plays are alive with humor, wit and sincerity drawn from the human experience. Through a Portagee Gate, the play, was commissioned by the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture of the University of Massachusetts Dartmouth. Both plays were sponsored for regional performances by the Center and produced by Culture*Park Theatre of New Bedford, Massachusetts.
Reviews:
“The name in Portuguese means yellow, but . . . Amarelo, by Paulo Pereira, is pure gold.”—Providence Journal
Endorsements:
“Both plays dramatize the epic nature of immigrant assimilation with such heart and humor that, while the specific textures of New Bedford anchor these plays as capsules of a cultural moment, the dramatic action is universal to any audience with roots, namely, all of us. Pereira and Thomas excel at staging the uniquely American experience of negotiating one’s integrity when pulled by the paradoxes of immigrant identity. These are the types of plays that have tableaux that linger well after the curtain falls.”—Tom Grady, playwright, author of American Cocktail
- PATRICIA A. THOMAS is a theatre director, teacher, writer and producer who began her career in theatre in the 1980s as a company member at Trinity Repertory Company in Providence, Rhode Island. She has worked internationally as a theatre director and teacher. In Boston, she wrote and adapted plays with young people, including Love & Mosquitoes, at The Teather Offensive, and Island of the Beholder, at the Boston Center for the Arts. Thomas is co-funder and Artistic Director of Culture*Park Theatre and Performing Arts Collaborative in New Bedford, Massachusetts, where she now resides. PAULO A. PEREIRA was born and raised in New Bedford, Massachusetts. He earned a degree in Theater Arts and Computer Science from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. While at MIT, he was involved in numerous productions as an actor, director, producer, and playwright. Amarelo, his first full-length play, opened in New York City in 1998. More recently, Amarelo was performed at UMass Dartmouth, produced by Culture*Park and sponsored by the Center for Portuguese Studies and Culture. He resides in Merrimack, New Hampshire, with his wife Leah and their children.