In America, I Discovered I Was European

Natalia Correia lived one of the most productive and flamboyant lives in the history of Portuguese culture. In June 1950 – a month bracketed by Senator Margaret Chase Smith’s denunciation of McCarthyism and the outbreak of the Korean conflict – Correia made her first visit to the United States. Moving from Boston, coastal Maine, and New Bedford, Massachusetts, to New York City and Washington, DC, she mingled with intellectuals and politicians at soirees, visited art museums, frequented nightclubs, spoke on Portuguese-language radio, and met with Luso-Americans and small-town locals. In America, I Discovered I Was European reveals the attractions and contradictions of midcentury America through the experiences, discoveries, perceptive observations, and critical reflections of a lifelong enfant terrible.