ABSTRACT
Gilberto Freyre remains a Colossus who transformed Brazilian understanding of what slavery, and its inheritance, means to that vast nation. He also provided a panoramic vision of the development of the slave cultures of Brazil, and of their cultural fallout in post-emancipation Brazil, which was adopted and adapted in various ways in Euro-American scholarship in the latter half of the twentieth century. Yet it is fair to say that his major work has not easily been understood by, or assimilated within, Anglo-American diaspora studies, where he remains an ambiguous presence.2
