The article discuss important variables on post-abolition literature, stressing the expectations and attitudes of the slaves´ last generation in the first decades after the end of slavery. It also focuses the Brazilian specific features, analyzing freed people willingness to protect family, to establish a "good reputation", to exercise rights of fatherhood and to enhance important aspects of citizenship. It uses several primary sources, specially birth records, newspapers and testimonies of slaves grandchildren.
post emancipation; family; citzenship