José Henrique Bortoluci in conversation about WHAT IS MINE

Join us for an evening with José Henrique Bortoluci about his new book, What Is Mine. In What Is Mine, sociologist José Henrique Bortoluci uses interviews with his father, Didi, to retrace the recent history of Brazil and of his family. From the mid-1960s to the mid-2010s, Didi’s work as a truck driver took him away from home for long stretches at a time as he crisscrossed the country and participated in huge infrastructure projects including the Trans-Amazonian Highway, a scheme spearheaded by the military dictatorship of the time, undertaken through brutal deforestation. An observer of history, Didi also recounts the toll his work has taken on his health, from a heart attack in middle age to the cancer that defines his retirement. Bortoluci weaves the history of a nation with that of a man, uncovering parallels between cancer and capitalism – both sustained by expansion, both embodiments of ‘the gospel of growth at any cost’ – and traces the distance that class has placed between him and his father. Influenced by authors such as Annie Ernaux and Svetlana Alexievich, What Is Mine is a moving, thought-provoking and brilliantly constructed examination of the scars we carry, as people and as countries.

José will be in conversation with Claire Williams and Laura Tajber Waisbich

José Henrique Bortoluci was born in Jaú in 1984. He has a BA in International Relations and an MA in Social History from the University of São Paulo, as well as an MA and a PhD in Sociology from the University of Michigan, where he lectured and was a Fulbright fellow. He is a professor of Sociology at the Fundação Getúlio Vargas in São Paulo, where his lectures and research revolve around Brazilian politics, social theory, democracy and social movements.

Laura Trajber Waisbich is Departmental Lecturer in Latin American Studies and Director of the Brazilian Studies Programme, at the University of Oxford. Her work revolves around foreign policy, international development cooperation, policy diffusion, state-society relations, and open government in the Global South. Her current research projects focus on the disputes surrounding the growing role of rising powers like China, India, and Brazil in the current geopolitical landscape and on the challenges of multi-level governance in the Amazon. Prior to joining Oxford, she accumulated over 10 years of experience working for civil society organisations and think tanks, primarily in Brazil and the UK.

Claire Williams is Associate Professor in Brazilian Literature and Culture at the University of Oxford and a Fellow of St Peter’s College. Her research and publications explore literature by women and minority groups from the Lusophone World. Recent publications include the co-edited volume Transnational Portuguese Studies (Liverpool University Press, 2021), with Hilary Owen and After Clarice: Reading Lispector in the Twenty-first Century (Legenda, 2022), with Adriana X. Jacobs. She is preparing a monograph on life-writing by contemporary Brazilian women.

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