Taking a 7-1

When I first moved to Brazil, I was overwhelmed by its vastness and diversity. Brazil is physically larger than the 48 states, and includes German-speaking communities in the south, uncontacted indigenous peoples in the Amazon, the largest Japanese population outside of Japan and the largest African-descended population outside of Africa. The imagined community of the nation seemed even more tenuous than in the U.S.—how could all two hundred million-plus Brazilians share a unified sense of what it means to be Brazilian? Early on, I asked my girlfriend’s brother what, if anything, he thought united Brazilians, and he said there wasn’t much. Just football.