{"product_id":"a-beautiful-fight-esther-viola-kurtz-9780472077540","title":"A Beautiful Fight: The Racial Politics of Capoeira in Backland Bahia","description":"\u003ci\u003eA Beautiful Fight\u003c\/i\u003e examines the potentials and limits of capoeira Angola to cohere a multiracial community committed to antiracist struggle. Capoeira, a musical fight-game that originated among enslaved Africans in Brazil, holds special significance for Black Brazilian activists as a spiritual and political practice that affirms the value of Black lives, thus countering anti-Black violence sanctioned by the Brazilian state. However, many capoeira groups count more white practitioners than Black, especially groups of the politicized, Afrocentric style capoeira Angola, raising debates about appropriation of Black culture that resonate across the Americas.\u003ci\u003e A Beautiful Fight \u003c\/i\u003eaddresses these tensions. Drawing on ethnographic research with a multiracial capoeira Angola group in Brazil's Bahian \u003ci\u003esertão \u003c\/i\u003eor backlands, Esther Viola Kurtz explores diverse group members' understandings of capoeira's spiritual and political meanings and considers how white participation impacts capoeira's antiracist politics. \u003ci\u003eA Beautiful Fight \u003c\/i\u003eargues that white practitioners occupying space in capoeira divert attention from Black members' concerns and reproduce racist and colonialist ideologies, albeit unintentionally. In this way, the book complicates claims that shared music and dance bridge differences and facilitate cross-racial unity, yet Kurtz proposes that capoeira still transmits knowledge and tools that, when used with intention, commitment, and care, can be wielded to collaboratively contest racism and imagine a more just world.\u003cbr\u003e\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eAuthor:\u003c\/b\u003e Esther Viola Kurtz\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-10:\u003c\/b\u003e 0472077546\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eISBN-13:\u003c\/b\u003e 9780472077540\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublisher:\u003c\/b\u003e University of Michigan Press\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eLanguage:\u003c\/b\u003e English\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePublished:\u003c\/b\u003e 07\/28\/2025\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003ePages:\u003c\/b\u003e 238\u003cbr\u003e\u003cb\u003eFormat:\u003c\/b\u003e Hardcover","brand":"Esther Viola Kurtz","offers":[{"title":"Hardcover","offer_id":47039756828927,"sku":"9780472077540","price":85.0,"currency_code":"USD","in_stock":true}],"thumbnail_url":"\/\/cdn.shopify.com\/s\/files\/1\/0662\/2982\/9887\/files\/img_7c7cdef6-d000-49dd-a4e0-475b3322cefd.jpg?v=1752752471","url":"https:\/\/www.whiterainbookhouse.com\/products\/a-beautiful-fight-esther-viola-kurtz-9780472077540","provider":"WR Book House","version":"1.0","type":"link"}