This analysis of the introduction of racial theories to Brazil and their reception by Brazilian intellectuals in the late nineteenth/early twentieth centuries looks at miscegenation, racism, and whitening policies through the lenses of two novels that bear witness to the era's mentality: O cortiço (1890; A Brazilian tenement, 1976), by Aluísio Azevedo, and Canaã (1902; Canaan, 1920), by Graça A...