Summary

“Meant To Be” begins with Dores’s titular song lyrics about wanting to be close to someone and being destined to help one another. In Chapter 9, Dores discusses how samba pervades all kinds of people throughout Rio. She insists that it is impractical to define music and people alike with such rigid boundaries. She prefers the fluidity of Lapa and the freedom of her youth. Yet she acknowledges that stereotypes provide insufficient generalizations, making her more complex that any of the identities available to her at the time could define. She felt most connected to and understood by the members of the roda.

In Chapter 10, Dores felt elated in the hours after her sexual encounter with Anaïs. She found Graça back in their room, brought there by Vinicius. Dores told Graça the truth about the night, and Graça told Dores...