Adolfo Caminha


Adolfo Ferreira Caminha was a Brazilian Naturalist novelist, famous for his polemical novel Bom-Crioulo, which deals with race and homosexuality.

Life

Caminha was born in Aracati in 1867, to Raimundo Ferreira dos Santos and Maria Firmina Caminha. Orphaned when he was 10 years old, he went to live with his uncle in Fortaleza. In 1883, he moved to Rio de Janeiro, where another relative of his matriculated him in a naval school. In 1886, he published his first book: Voos Incertos. In the same year, he made an instruction trip to the United States.
In 1887 he was promoted to Second Lieutenant and published the short story books Judite and Lágrimas de um Crente. In 1888 he returned to Fortaleza, but got involved on a scandal where he eloped with an alférezs daughter. They would have two daughters, and fled to Rio de Janeiro, where Caminha would spend his life as a civil servant.
By 1891,
Caminha was working on journals such as the Jornal do Commercio, Gazeta de Notícias and O País, using the pseudonym Félix Guanabarino. He also published the novel A Normalista. In 1894, he published an account of his travel to the U.S.A., entitled No País dos Ianques. In 1895, he published his controversial novel Bom-Crioulo and Cartas Literárias. In 1896, he founded a journal named Nova Revista, and published the novel Tentação.
Poor and debilitated by tuberculosis, he would die at only 29 years old, leaving unfinished two novels.

Works

Poetry