Stigma: Saga for a New World

In Stigma: Saga for a New World, Valdivia S. Beauchamp narrates the trajectory of 23 Dutch/Brazilian Sephardic Jews from Recife to New Amsterdam, in the United States, now New York, the first cosmopolitan nucleus of the New World and the future financial capital of the 20th century. On the pretext of a voyage in search of her ancestry and its history, the principal character, the journalist Sarah, daughter of a Dutch father and a Brazilian mother, projects a panoramic vision not only of the saga of a people, but also of an important era in Brazilian history: the period of dutch conquest and the rule of Count Maurice of Nassau in Recife. By strict definition, Stigma is historical fiction. But imagery of the period is inserted along side the text, and, in the end Sarah writes a review of Stigma for an american newspaper. Devices like these reveal that the author has introduced an ingenious structure in which fiction and history, past and present, research and fantasy, word and image are balanced in a delicate and imagination-provoking equilibrium.