Bia Vieira: A Complicated History

Bia Vieira shares how coffee reminds her of her upbringing.

When I first had coffee, I was a baby. In Brazil, my bottle held café com leite, a baby latte, mostly milk, but it was the bitterness I craved. By the time I could walk, I knew the smell of good coffee. It became a language I learned before I could speak. 

It’s a complicated language, Brazil built much of its wealth on coffee harvested by enslaved people for generations. We were the last country in the Americas to abolish slavery, in 1888. A history that lives in every cup of café com leite.

When I left Brazil for the U.S., I arrived with the quiet vulnerability of starting over somewhere intent on erasing your history. Immigration takes courage – new customs, new language, no one who remembers who I’d been. Coffee was something to hold onto; its smell and taste grounded me.

Every morning since, that smell transports me: my grandma’s kitchen, the cool tile floor under bare feet, the air shifting just before she poured. Standing in my S.F. kitchen, that first whiff pulls me back to Brazil. 

A cup holds both at once: where it came from, and who taught me to love it. Two countries, an ocean between them, a history neither one can fully separate from the cup. Brazil received more enslaved Africans than any other country in the Americas, nearly 5 million, compared to roughly 400,00 brought directly to the U.S. 

Two countries still carry this history. Still, every morning, a smell brings me home. Brazil gave me the habit, the history and my grandma’s kitchen, together. Coffee taught me belonging and history can sit in the same cup, challenging, bridging and stirring each other. With a Perspective, I’m Bia Vieira.

Originally from Brazil, Bia Vieira now lives in San Francisco. She is the first Latina CEO of Women’s Foundation California, a statewide, community-supported foundation dedicated to achieving racial, economic, environmental, and gender justice.