An interview with historian Jeffrey Lesser

Jeffrey Lesser is the Samuel Candler Dobbs professor of history at Emory University. He is a historian of modern Latin American history, especially Brazil. He has written many books, his most recent is Living and Dying in São Paulo: Immigrants, Health, and the Built Environment in Brazil (Duke University Press, 2025). We caught up to chat about that book, Brazil, and history.

How do you explain what the book is about? What’s the argument?

So, it's a book primarily about the relationship between past and present. And the argument, in the biggest sense, is a continuity argument, which often isn't what historians do. Historians think about change over time, and this book argues a lot about constancy over time, and that when we look at the relationships between immigrants who were part of the working class and healthcare providers, things don't look as different today from the past as we might like to believe they would look. So that’s what I would say the main argument is.

What do you hope readers will get from it? What's the takeaway you're hoping for?

One takeaway I'm hoping is that, from a kind of methods perspective, that we can look at a small place. This book is focused on this one neighborhood in Brazil, but that we can actually see phenomena and analyze phenomena that are happening globally. So, the argument in the book is always that this place, there's a version of this place in Atlanta, there's a version of this place in Miami, there's a version of this place in Madrid, there's a version of this place in Cairo, right? So that's one thing I want to argue, which again is kind of counter traditional historical approaches, which are all about like, this place is not like that place. So that's one thing I want them to get out of it.

And another thing I guess I want them to get out of it from a kind of non-historical perspective is that there are actually some pretty simple ways to improve healthcare outcomes if only healthcare systems would engage with them. So, in this particular case, in Brazil, there's a single payer system, a national healthcare system. So that's very different than the United States. All of the people in the book, in the present, have healthcare because it's a part of the deal. But because the system doesn't acknowledge the multicultural nature of Brazil, the outcomes get messed up because the providers and the patients aren't speaking the same language. In the United States, we actually have lots of providers who speak lots of languages. At least in big cities. But some people can't go to the doctor.  So their healthcare outcomes are bad.

So that's another big part of it, which is to try to get people in public health and in medicine to understand that what they do on a day-to-day basis has a past to it, and that past will make them better at their jobs if they can understand that.

Well, I think that kind of sets up what my next question was going to be, is there something that's very timely about this book, like, “this book, right now” for a reason? I think it kind of sounds like yes.

Yeah. I thought about it a lot because I was like writing the book during COVID. And it was so kind of incredible to see how different things were in São Paulo than in Atlanta. Even though both are supposedly cities with great healthcare. But São Paulo had one of the lowest COVID rates in the world, and Atlanta, one of the highest COVID rates in the world, because of attitudes and policies about health, about citizenship, and things like that. And so as I was writing it, there's a part of the book that's about, that compares the bubonic plague, which was at the end of the 19th century in São Paulo, and the great so-called Spanish Flu. Right. The flu of what was that? 1914, I think. I can't remember exactly.

1918, 1919.

Yeah, 1918. You see, I'm a bad historian. I can't even remember the dates. 1918. Obviously, I'm writing about this stuff, and it's during COVID, and I'm thinking about all these things, and how much of what I was seeing in the past in Brazil was happening to me in the present in Atlanta. So that was kind of interesting to me.

Were you always interested in public health, or do you think being at Emory, having the CDC there, it just kind of, gradually over time makes you more interested in public health?

First of all, I'm not even sure I'm interested in public health, to be perfectly honest. I think what I'm interested in is people's identities. And that's been my long-term interest. Every book I've written somehow is about identities. And I'm interested in people, which is kind of different than being interested in policy or interested in elite discourses, right? So I've always been interested in that.

I think what has changed at Emory was—I'm not sure it's because of Emory or just because of this increasing discomfort on my part with history as a kind of a category or a profession that has these rules that, you know, “this is history, this isn't.” I think it came through to me very much when, maybe about 15 years ago, a colleague who's no longer at Emory in a department meeting kind of screamed at me and said something like, you know, “we hired you as a historian!” Because they were unhappy that I'd done a book that was primarily about the 60s and 70s. And so I think that really convinced me even more. Keep doing it. You've got to get out.

And I'd even made a proposal when I was chair of history—I didn't think it was going to go anyplace and it didn't—that we change the name of the department from the history department to the department of studies of the past. This would help us be more comfortable with interdisciplinarity. And so I think that's really what changed. And then I think health, I think, worked out because I found the right people to talk to. But I'm not sure health, in and of itself, is a particular motivation for me. I can't see myself now writing, you know, 25 more books about health.

You know, right now I'm thinking, what should my next book be? And so one of the things I'm thinking is, maybe I'll just write a history of the nighttime. You know, like what happens at night in São Paulo. And so that's kind of how it goes.

 I read a book about night in early modern Europe that was really good. I'm trying to remember what it was called. It might have been like Empire of the Night or something. [Evening’s Empire: A History of the Night in Early Modern Europe by Craig Koslofsky] Anyway, it was all about how people understood the nighttime and pre-lighting, gas lighting and things like that. How different it was from now—like, who would go out at night? It's basically like criminals and students and ne'er-do-wells. And then that also ties into, like, when Louis XIV is doing his magnificent fireworks displays. Like, you think about when there's not artificial lighting everywhere, that's him asserting his dominance over the night in a way which— I mean, Fourth of July is cool, but we're not thinking, you know, we conquered nighttime.

Exactly.  Well, and that's one of the things I've been thinking about is how, like— I mean, here in São Paulo, you know, you really sense how scary night is compared to day. And so I thought, oh, that could be kind of interesting. And there's all sorts of stuff that I've had, sometimes by chance, like the opportunity to see at night, like the world of the night. And I was like, oh, that would be kind of cool. So, the point being that it's not that health is my thing or that I became somehow transformed by Emory because of health. I think health just became a way to talk about these other things in a different way. And so that kind of worked for me. 

I think all this ties into my next question, which was already about history typically being written about the past from the present, but with, you know, more maybe distinctions between the two. And this topic seems to be kind of blurring those lines, which, you've already kind of said something about that. Do you think there are any lines there in terms of, like, is there too close to the present for historians? Should there be? Should there not be? You've been working kind of in this area. What are some of the thoughts you've developed on this? 

I guess the most basic answer is I'm trying to rid at least myself of should-bes. I think good scholarship can come in a lot of different forms. And you can have good scholarship that follows a very kind of strict path, like disciplinary path. But I also think good scholarship can come from blowing that up.

I myself am very interested in blowing it up, which means I spent a lot of time learning about other forms of knowledge. I think sometimes my graduate students get a little irritated with me when I try to impose, not impose, but push them to give more social science or science-like answers to their questions. So, one of the big jokes of my graduate seminar last semester was somebody referred to some little intellectual as famous. And I kind of said, no, famous is Beyoncé. That's what famous is. And when you say somebody who no one in this class has ever heard of but you is famous, like, what are you trying to get at? That's something I've really learned well from working with physicians and epidemiologists and psychologists and neurosciences and stuff like that. So, that's what I've been thinking about. 

I mean, one thing that's cool at Emory, I don't know if it's that way at Palm Beach, but it's very easy to cross-list courses. So, for example, now in the fall I'm teaching a course called The Public's Health in Latin America. And it's history, anthropology, human health, Brazilian studies, and something else, all at the same time, which means when I was looking at the cross-list, there are chemistry majors in there and biology majors. And for me, that's really exciting to have a chemistry major applying or pushing the class to talk about the past in a certain way. So, that's how I'm trying to think about it.

And I'm trying to –part of this book, a lot of the research was done with this team, this kind of shifting team over the years. And we've been pretty lucky for, like, seven years in a row, I’ve been able to get funds to bring the team here for three months. And so right now, one of the people on the team is a PhD student of mine in history. And she's interested in nutrition among working-class women in the 1910s and 20s. That's her topic.

But one of the things that I've been able to do is set her up with the nutritionist at the health clinic where I work, that I'm affiliated with. She goes out one day a week on a home visit with this nutritionist to working-class people, actual living working-class people, who – and kind of sees, how do people talk about nutrition, how does the nutritionist? And then is trying to apply that backwards when she reads a pamphlet from the Ministry of Health about, you know, the working class are all morons. They don't understand they need to eat more beans and drink less beer because that's exactly what people say today, too. So, I think that's going to make her a better historian, or that's the bet I'm making. Obviously, many historians would disagree with me. 

I also have a couple of questions about Brazil because my assumption would be that most Americans don't really know much about Brazil, right? So, I think, like, beaches and soccer, maybe Pelé, but, I mean, maybe young people don't even know who he is at this point. What are some really common perceptions and misperceptions of Brazil by Americans that you keep observing over time, past and present? 

I would say that most of the perceptions are misperceptions, which in a sense gives me my job, right? If everybody knew it, why would they need me? But I think you're right. I mean, it's soccer. Sexuality, I think, is something that people associate with Brazil. Beaches, which, of course, is very funny doing research in São Paulo, which is one of the biggest cities in the world. There's no beach. There's no beach close by. I mean, you know, the beach is hours and hours away. And so those are the kinds of misperceptions. 

Many of the students who I have, have no perceptions, other than, you know, they vaguely hear about things out there in the news. And so for them, it's all kind of surprising, like to discover that Brazil is larger than the continental United States. That Brazil had a huge population of enslaved people and then a huge population of immigrants from around the world. They're always surprised when I tell them that here in São Paulo, there are more people of Japanese descent just in São Paulo than the whole rest of the world together outside of Japan.

You know, because people in the United States tend to think that the U.S. is the biggest and the most of everything.  And then students – right now, the Emory Study Abroad program is here in São Paulo, which I'm only tangentially related to—but what I do is, I take them on three different walks in the city. And last week I took them on a walk in the center of the city. I take them to places where tourists never go. And the students – there were a number of students who were really surprised that what here are considered progressive representations of people of African descent in the United States would be considered offensive representations. And it was a kind of an interesting conversation, to talk to them about – it's not like how things work in the United States is the right way and every other place kind of either achieves it or fails at it. There are a lot of ways that people do things.

And at least to scholars, it's not for us to necessarily tell somebody, you know, your fight for civil rights is the wrong way. You should be doing our way or something like that. So that's pretty common. I don't know. At Emory, we're lucky because we have such a big Brazilian Studies program, such a big Portuguese language program. So often the students who I have – they tend not to have the worst of the stereotypes.

I have a student here who's from Brazil. Here in Florida, everything is Cuban, right? So, it's a big Cuban population, with quite a bit of awareness of Cuba. But other places, not really. And then everyone's always shocked that she doesn't really speak Spanish. And she tries to explain that Brazil is different. How do you explain what’s different about Brazil, especially for people who have no perception? I mean, obviously it's Portuguese influence versus Spanish influence going way back. But moving forward, is there a short way that you try to explain that to students what's distinct about Brazil? 

I think one of the things I tell them is that because Brazil is huge compared to all the other Latin American countries, that there's a lot more influence of Brazil in Latin America than Spanish American influence in Brazil. So, if you go to Argentina or Paraguay or Bolivia, you're going to be buying Brazilian toothpaste and Brazilian cars and watching Brazilian telenovelas. And if you're in Brazil, it's like Argentina doesn't exist, except maybe in a football match. But you know, you don't think about them. And there's nothing to get you to think about them because it's not – and that's even in some ways the same for the United States. 

When you go into a store here, you buy Brazilian stuff. Well, Chinese stuff, too, I guess. But if you go to a store in Mexico, for example, the store is like Costco. One of my sons lived in Mexico for five years. And he would always say, Dad, when you're here, let's go buy these things and you can take them back to Atlanta because you can buy the same Costco product in Costco with your Costco membership, just cheaper. And that doesn't really exist here. 

That student got talking about Brazilian pizza toppings. Something came up and she was like, oh, some of my favorite pizza toppings are, like, peas. And she was like, you know, you’ve got to put, like, mustard on your pizza. And everyone was like, what? No, no, no, no. 

I just took my team out for pizza because I wanted to show them how different it was.  Because not only are all the ingredients different, but, at least here in São Paulo, pizza is a fancy meal. So you go to a nice place, you wear nice clothes, you get served it slice by slice by a waiter. You eat it with a knife and fork. 

The doctor I work with here, he came to Atlanta to give some talks. And his primary photographs for the thing were him eating pizza with his hands. He was sending pictures to everybody here in Brazil, like, look at me. Can you believe this crazy country?  Look at these savages. This is how they do it. So, no, those are all the kinds of things where, I mean, I think it's what makes, for me, Brazil interesting. Because on the one hand, there's something completely recognizable. It's recognizable because it's a big imperialist country like the United States. It's recognizable because it's a big industrial country like the United States. It's recognizable because of the heritage of slavery. It's recognizable because of the influence of immigrants. Right? But it's certainly not the same. It's like looking at it in one of those mirrors with the curves or something. So, I think that helps in explaining things to people. 

Now, you've written quite a few books at this point. What is your secret for getting things done? How do you do it? 

I don't know if it's a secret, but after college, I never thought I would be an academic. And I worked in the music business, which I'd been doing through college. And so, when I graduated, I had a job in New York City, and it was like a corporate job. I made so much money. In my first year, I got a sports car as a bonus.

And one of the things that job taught me really well was to set goals, achieve goals, and pat yourself on the back. And so, I think when I became an academic, what I realized, for me at least, was treating it as a job rather than a lifestyle would make a difference. When I'm writing, I'm very strict. I write five pages a day. I don't worry about whether they're good or bad pages. And when I get to five, I just stop and do something else.  I try really hard to be productive, let's say, from eight to six, Monday through Friday. But then, you know, I enjoy doing things with my spouse and other kinds of things. I don't think that's really a trick.

I think a lot of academics are kind of, they wake up, they read the New York Times cover to cover. And then it's noon, and now it's lunchtime. And, you know, it's a different approach. That might work for some people. As I said, I'm not here to judge anybody for how they do it. I only know how I do it. But what it's meant is that I'm very clear, like, now I'm doing my research, and I'm going to have this amount of time to do my research, and then it's time to stop and write. Now I have to write 300 pages. And I've got to do that. And if I write five pages a day, I can get those 300 pages written in X number of months. Now I have 300 really bad pages. Now I've got to revise. I'm very strict with myself about that. And that works. I think it also, I mean, I know for some of my colleagues, they're very consumed with perfection or something like that. And since I was never the smartest kid, I never worried about that.

I'm from the hard work school, not the brilliant school. You know, I have a colleague who you probably know, but whose name I won't mention, who's been working on what I'm sure will be a brilliant book for 45 years and will never finish the brilliant book. And I'm always very appreciative of the idea that, you know, the best book is the done book. You know, like a doctoral dissertation. Academia is littered with people who never finish, brilliant people who never finish their PhD. But it turns out that it's people like me who have jobs, right? Like, you write your book, you write another book, you write another book. So, for me, that's how I do it. So, the challenge is the rigor. The challenge isn't like, oh my God, I need to have the thought that's going to change the world. I don't think my books are going to change the world. I don't think if I never wrote a book, the world would be that much different. So that's how I do it. So now I'm back in step zero again. Find a project, find the documents or the data, get money to do the research, write the book. Done. 

All right. So, one last question for you. Sure. And this could be history or anything. Are there any books that you regularly recommend to other people? Like, books that you're always like, oh, you should read this. And it can be, I mean, fiction, poetry, history, sociology, whatever.

Yes. The two books that I think are the best history books that I've read recently, one is called Lipstick Traces.  And it's by a rock and roll writer named Greal Marcus, who used to be the music critic, I think, for the New York Times, in which he tries to argue a connection between John of Leiden, who was a German Anabaptist. Yeah, way back. Way back. And Johnny Leiden, who was the singer of the Sex Pistols. 

Oh, wow.

And he tries to think about art over time and things like that. And I think it's an incredible, incredible book. And the other book that I love is called World War Z. If you've seen the movie, it's nothing like the movie. I mean, it's the same idea, but it's nothing like it. But World War Z is written as an oral history of the zombie attack and defeat by the population. And it's like a great oral history.

Chapter one is, you know, a soldier. Chapter two is a person whose mother was eaten by the zombies. Chapter three is a nurse. Chapter four is the person who robs whatever. And it's done in the way a great oral history is, except it has zombies, which is awesome. Although I have to admit, whenever I taught these books in seminars, the students have not loved them as much as I do. Those are my two favorite books. 

I think there's one kind of historian who starts with historiography. And so for them, what's been done is really important to what they are doing. And I'm more interested in, like, let's do something that nobody's ever done before. I'm always looking for a project that has almost no historiography to deal with. Because I think, for me at least, when I start reading historiography, I'm very influenced by it. And what I'm trying to do is get out of that and do it somehow differently. So that's why I like fiction. For my health class last year, the first reading was a very weird science fiction short story about a kind of race of people who stayed alive by writing the history of their health with their fingernails on whatever. It was super weird. But very interesting because it had all of the things that for me in that class were interesting. The past, but this racist past is obviously happening in this science fiction future. You know, how you keep records, right? That's a great thing for a historian. Beautifully written, because the whole short story is, like, five pages long, and it's the whole story, and it's five pages. That's great. You can write something in five pages. You're a superstar. So that's what I've been doing lately. 

This interview was conducted by Elizabeth Stice.