Deeply Rooted in the Present: Heritage, Memory, and Identity in Brazilian Quilombos (Teaching Culture: UTP Ethnographies for the Classroom)

Deeply Rooted in the Present is a brief and engaging ethnography that illustrates the ways in which memories, knowledge, and experience are transformed into cultural heritage. Based on ethnographic fieldwork, interviews, and historical research, the book uses a Brazilian quilombola community (descendants of enslaved Africans) as a case study. In exploring what it means to be a Quilombola in the twenty-first century, it demonstrates how heritage and identity do not simply exist, but are continually being made and remade according to the social, cultural, and political needs of the present. The book encourages readers to make connections between this particular Brazilian quilombola community of traditional pottery makers and their own heritage.