This article presents and discusses how concepts and representations of "race", miscegenation, sexuality, gender, erotism, and marriage are operated in two paradigmatic novels by Jorge Amado which represent two important periods in the author's trajectory: Jubiabá, from the period called "proletarian novel", and Gabriela, Cravo e Canela, which marked a twist in Amado's career, beginning of the phase called "dialogical novel". The protagonists in both novels are inter-racial couples who help the author transmit some current social representations (and on science in that time), not only of the relations between blacks and whites, but as well of a nation that, on the one hand, perceives itself as having mixed blood, and, on the other, faced (and faces) the dilemma of racial differentiation. One will see that forbidden desire and class fights lived by the couple black man / white woman (Jubiabá), once contrasted to erotism, marriage, and progress focused by the relation between (almost) white man / woman of mixed blood, explain some current representations of nation transmitted in Brazilian society through its various institutions.
Race; sexuality; class; representations of nation
