In the electrifying novel Phenotypes, Paulo Scott takes on the complex subject of Brazil’s racism and colorism, dispelling rosy myths of the country as one of harmonious multiculturalism. In a story of two brothers—Lourenço and Federico, the former dark-skinned and the latter light—the intricacies of privilege, identity, activism, and guilt are brilliantly explored in Scott’s unmistakable blend of length and lyric, bringing to the page some of the most urgent and daunting questions of our time. We are honored to host this title as our Book Club selection for January, and also to have spoken live to Scott and translator Daniel Hahn about the novel’s nuances, regionality, and language.
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Rachel Farmer (RF): One of the main themes of Phenotypes is what constitutes an activist approach to the many problems portrayed in the novel. Paulo, could you talk about what inspired you to write about activism in this way?
Paulo Scott (PS): Well Rachel, I come from Southern Brazil, which is a very racist region. My family is black, upper-middle class—you know, the kind of family that is in a position to speak out against this racism. So I took the truth of my family to create fiction. My brother is black—real black—and I have this lighter skin. But I see myself as a black man. My mother might deny it now, but as I remember, she always said that we were a black family.
I think that this book is both one of anger and of self-reflection. The protagonist found a place in the heart of anger to build a very specific story for himself, then at some point, he got lost in this fight against racism. He believed himself to be really strong, he saw his father as a very strong man, and he thought that his father’s power was in this anger, his rage against the world—but it wasn’t. Instead, the fact is that his father could understand the complexity of racism, like [Martin Luther] King [Jr.].
There is a connection between the members of this family: father, grandfather, son, and granddaughter—Roberta, the niece of the protagonist. They are almost the same entity, as three different movements of the same vision. The story ends with Roberta sleeping in the back seat of the car because she’s the future. I could have written a book about Roberta, for efficiency’s sake, but this is not a book of answers; this is a book of questions. The racism in Brazil is very, very strong, and it’s still a taboo topic here. The suffering is so pervasive that some readers struggle to see themselves in this mirror.
RF: Were certain characters—such as that of the mother—inspired directly by the memories of your own family?
PS: My brother was the coach of my state’s basketball team, and he is a really dark-skinned man. He’s not afraid to be with white people—powerful people. He’s black, but he’s in that club of the upper-class, and he doesn’t accept any disrespect. That’s really strong.
As for the relationship between Federico and his mother, Daniel’s translation gets to the heart of the subtle dialogue between them. The dialogue between a child and a mother is never an easy thing to put to paper, but it is crucial. Federico wants to see change—right now. He has empathy for his younger brother, because, as a black man with lighter skin, he understands the tragedy around the lives of his brother and his father.
The connection that the mother has with his father and his brother is much stronger. She knows that their home forms a kind of shield for them. As a black person, you do not get to be an activist who can choose when to go outside to fight your fight. You are always black. You have no place to hide. You’re always in this stressful state. A black man in Brazil has the weight of the world on his shoulders.
Daniel Hahn (DH): What’s interesting, though, is that you say that a black person in Brazil doesn’t have a choice—but Federico chooses. He has a lot of privilege from being light-skinned, but he makes a choice for reasons of guilt, or politics, or responsibility. He deliberately chooses to be an activist for the cause of black people.
RF: That makes the choice of perspective quite intriguing. Federico experiences things that are really uncomfortable; you see that he benefits from being perceived as white, memorably in the army scene, which is excruciating.
Danny, you mentioned the very specific racial context of Brazil in your translator’s note, and the first page of the book talks about how Brazil is seen as this ethnically harmonious country—which you show quite clearly to be false. Danny and Paulo, what do you think this book can add to the global conversation about racism? Some of the scenes with Roberta at the police protests, for example, echo footage we were seeing from the Black Lives Matter protests.
DH: This myth of Brazil as a place of great racial harmony is not just a lie that is told domestically, it’s a lie that is sold internationally. It’s part of how Brazil presents itself. My family is from Brazil, and it’s something I would have heard from my relatives, who are all white, upper-middle-class people in Brazil. For that reason, I think the value of this book—not just in literary terms, but from an activist perspective—is slightly different. Paulo can speak to the book’s impact in Brazil, but I’m really excited that there are people who are reading and discussing the book in English, that it’s having an effect on the pervasive assumption about Brazil: that everyone loves each other, everyone is so friendly, it’s always sunny, paradise, beaches, etc. I think it’s a really important contribution to the other perspective, because we know so little about the truth from the outside.
PS: Daniel’s translation really captures that the racial problem in Brazil is one of language, not just history. The narrative depends on this sensitivity, and that’s why the translation is so important in conveying the meaning of this book. It’s impossible to understand this book without a very good translation.
RF: Danny, in your translator’s note, you mentioned that you consulted Paulo about certain terms—Preto and Negro being examples—and that you might not have completely grasped the nuance without Paulo’s help. Could you talk a bit about how you liaised with Paulo?
DH: I was very lucky in that Paulo is a writer who understands what translation demands. He also reads English perfectly, so I didn’t just send him a few questions; I sent him the entire translation. There were a thousand problems that he helped me solve, but he also read the whole thing. Some writers are happy to do that, and some are less generous.
It was important for him to explain things to me, both in practical terms with the language of race, but also sometimes geographically specific things—food, for example, because it’s set in a place I’ve never been. Those details matter quite a lot.
As a translator, I’m asking this person to trust me. If my translation is good, people will understand what a great writer Paulo is, but I also have the possibility to destroy this man’s reputation on the global stage. I know that I can do a lot of damage if I don’t get it right. As a result, it’s really important to me that the writer I translate is respectful, not controlling, and also understands really precisely what it is I’m trying to do. When that happens, it’s very reassuring.
I’m very conscious—as I think I must be—that this is a book about race. It’s a book about blackness and the experience of blackness, which is very far outside my own experience. I’m a white man, and I don’t think that means I shouldn’t translate it, but it means I need to be responsible. I need to think very carefully, work very hard, get people to explain things I don’t know, and ultimately produce something that wouldn’t instigate the thought of: “Why on earth did they give it to this person who’s entirely inappropriate?” Having a writer who gives you that kind of moral and practical support is incredibly important.
I don’t always write an afterword for the books I translate, but I was really happy to for this one, because I got to the end of the translation and still felt there was so much I wanted to talk about. That’s exciting; it feels like there’s something very fertile in that.
RF: In the afterword, you do mention that your family is in Rio, and Paulo, you mentioned that this book is very specific to the context of Porto Alegre. Were there any specific linguistic challenges relating to regional dialect?
DH: This is the second book we’ve done together, so some problems were already resolved in the first book. I knew slightly more about Porto Alegre after having already done the other book, but I’ve still never been there. I translate from Portuguese, Spanish, and French, which together are the languages of some thirty-five countries. Sometimes I’m in a cultural territory where I’m very comfortable, and sometimes I have to learn, ask questions, and spend a lot of time on Google Street View—which I love.
Some of it is research, and some of it is asking the author what exactly is this sandwich they’re all eating. If someone is on a road, for example, the way I would describe that scene is slightly different depending on whether it is a very narrow lane or a really big road. If they’re turning from the small road onto a big road, I would say: “He turned out,” whereas otherwise he might turn in. Those things are trivial in one sense, but they depend on either knowing, acquiring, or faking that information. I am faking; that is also part of the job, to give the impression that I know everything that the author knows, which obviously is not true.
RF: Paulo, what makes the language and portrayal of Porto Alegre unique?
PS: Phenotypes does not depict Porto Alegre as a whole so much as my neighborhood. It concerns the idiosyncrasies of a peripheral, working-class, black neighborhood. From my window, you can see the buildings of the rich neighborhood on the hill across the river, which is already different, and in the opposite direction, there is another hill with a very poor neighborhood. So, this kind of subtle violence that happens in my neighborhood reveals the unsolved issues within my city and state—and thus in my country. If you focus a lens on this neighborhood, you can see the complexities of racial relations in our country.
The situation here is not very good, and is getting worse with our president. Fascism is on the rise. Even when Bolsonaro leaves office, Bolsonarismo will keep growing and becoming more aggressive.
RF: Danny, there’s a quote that made me chuckle from your 2014 essay for Asymptote about translating Paulo’s previous novel, Nowhere People. You say, “Next time I translate a book from Porto Alegre I’ll have a head-start and it will all be really easy. Honest.” There must be some truth to that. Is there a familiarity that you find with the author’s voice?
DH: How wise I was in 2014. That’s very true; I think it has much more to do with things like voice and style and the aesthetic of the writer, rather than knowing the actual setting. Because I’ve been doing this for a while now, at least half the books I translate are by people I’ve translated before—they’re recidivists. I’ve translated seven or eight books by certain writers, and it helps in two ways. One of them is knowing and understanding what they’re trying to do, recognizing the rhythm and the choice of words and, in the case of Paulo, having a sense of why those sentences work in the way that they do. His sentences are extraordinary.
The other thing that helps is that there is a precedent for the voice of Paulo Scott in English. The voices of these two books are not the same, but they’re also not completely different. One of the books I’m doing this summer is by José Eduardo Agualusa. We’ve done eight books together, and I know what he sounds like in English. All the books are a bit different, but he is still him. One of the things that makes it easier is not just recognizing what’s happening in Portuguese, but also that he has a voice in English.
Finding a way of making a voice work in a new language—making a rhythm work with completely different syntax—is one of the really difficult things about the job. It’s not only about comprehension. Having spent some time figuring out how to make Nowhere People a piece of English language prose, that has a certain kind of propulsion to it, which helps.
RF: Aren’t you overly erasing yourself when you say “he has a voice in English?” Isn’t that voice yours as well?
DH: Sure, we have a voice. Agualusa and I have an English voice, and Paulo and I have an English voice. The me-and-Paulo English voice and the me-and-Agualusa English voice are not, I hope, the same, because then I’m doing my job wrong. There is some consistency; I think if you read a sentence in Portuguese, you would recognize it as a Paulo Scott sentence from two hundred meters away. The idea is that in English, it’s the same. There is a personality. Even if the books are quite different, the fingerprints are the same.
RF: The thing that strikes you immediately when you open the book is that the second sentence is about a page long—and then it just keeps going. Initially, it’s a shock, because it’s different, but when you get into its rhythm, you see that it really serves the purpose of the novel. Could you talk about how the content and the syntax weave together?
PS: You know, Rachel, I’m a poet. I think that Daniel worked some magic, because it’s really difficult to preserve this rhythm. Daniel’s solutions are so impressive. Sometimes I feel too lucky, because I can lean on this edge in the Latin languages, while English is softer.
Nowhere People has much more description. The narrative is dependent on that description, and it would have been really easy to lose the grip on that connection. Phenotypes is different. There is very little direct discourse and much more indirect discourse. This poetic rhythm of my prose is very difficult.
DH: The poetry is certainly part of the problem, I have to say [laughing]. I don’t translate poetry if I can possibly avoid it, because as a translator, poetry frightens me. What’s interesting about the difference between the two books is that Phenotypes has a lot of dialogue, and even the bits that aren’t dialogue feel like someone is talking and have the rhythm of speech. I love translating dialogue.
We did an event a couple of weeks ago, and when I read the opening pages, I was delighted to discover what a pleasure they were to speak. As you said, Rachel, there are sentences that go on for two pages. It’s not dialogue, exactly; it’s someone describing walking into a committee room, but there’s a sense of spoken dialogue that lends momentum to the prose. I’m able to tell myself, “no, no, it’s not poetry,” so I don’t panic too much, but it is about creating a voice that mimics the rhythms of speech. If Phenotypes works in English, the next time we do an event on stage, I could open it and do a reading from any page, because even though the sentences are enormous, they have the rhythms and the breath of somebody talking to you.
Paulo Scott was born in Porto Alegre, lives in São Paulo, and works as a writer and cultural press collaborator.
Daniel Hahn is an award-winning translator, editor, and writer with eighty-something books to his name. He is currently translating a selection of short stories by Machado de Assis.
Rachel Farmer is a translator, interpreter, and subtitler based in Bristol, U.K. Her literary translations have appeared in SAND journal, No Man’s Land, and an anthology from Two Lines Press. Her latest translation is forthcoming from Strangers Press. In addition, she acts as chief executive assistant for Asymptote Journal and writes book reviews for Lunate magazine.
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