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 such as the Trans-Amazonian Highway, a scheme spearheaded by the military dictatorship of the time and undertaken thanks to 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, the diagnosis of which opens the book. Weaving the history of a nation with that of a man, Bortoluci explores the similarities between cancer and capitalism – both problems of expansion, both embodiments of ‘the gospel of growth at all costs’ – and traces the distance that class has placed between himself and his father. Inspired and influenced by authors such Annie Ernaux, Svetlana Alexievich and Ocean Vuong, What Is Mine is a moving, thought-provoking and brilliantly constructed examination of the scars we carry with us, as people and as countries.