Dr. Ana Paula Höfling

School of Dance
College of Visual and Performing Arts
Associate Professor, 2020

The City of Women
by Ruth Landes

Ruth Landes published The City of Women in 1947, a book based on fieldwork conducted in Bahia, Brazil, in 1938-39. Today her book is considered the first feminist ethnography--Landes pioneered a genre decades before it even existed. The City of Women is written in the first person and in it Landes details her own previous ignorance about Brazil, the sexism that limited her unescorted outings in the city, her discoveries in the field and her deeply emotional and personal involvement with the people she met. Every time I read the book I am transported to Salvador, Bahia, a city of uneven cobblestones, steep hills, and glaring income inequality, both then and now. I am grateful for her generosity, insight, and brilliance in writing this sharp and complex portrait of women, race, and religion in 1930s Bahia.

View title in library catalog