On 8 April Lisa Shaw launched her book Carmen Miranda (BFI/Palgrave Macmillan) at the Centro Cultural dos Correios in the city of Rio de Janeiro.

Invited guests included Carmen Miranda’s nieces, Cesar Balbi, the director of the Carmen Miranda Museum in Rio, and colleagues from the Communication Studies department at the Universidade Federal Fluminense, Niteroi, where Lisa has taught.

Lisa’s book examines how Miranda made the transition from being the most famous female singer of popular music in Brazil in the 1930s to becoming one of the nation’s leading film stars by the end of the decade. It then considers how her star text shifted with her move to Broadway and subsequently Hollywood in the early 1940s, as she was moulded into an ‘ethnic’ star who nevertheless challenged the cultural straightjacket that she was obliged by the studios to wear. Finally, the book analyses how and why…