Carolina Maria de Jesus' book, Quarto de Despejo (The Trash Room), depicted the harsh life of the slums, but it also spoke of the author's pride in her blackness, her high moral standards, and her patriotism. More than a million copies of her diary are believed to have been sold worldwide. Yet many Brazilians refused to believe that someone like de Jesus could have written such a diary, with its complicated words (some of them misused) and often lyrical phrasing as she discussed world events. Doubters prefer to believe the book was either written by Audáulio Dantas, the enterprising newspaper reporter who discovered her, or that Dantas rewrote it so substantially that her book is a fraud. With the cooperation of de Jesus' daughter, recent research shows that although Dantas deleted considerable portions of the diary (as well as a second one), every word was de Jesus'.
But Dantas did "create" a different Carolina from the woman who coped with her harsh life by putting things down on paper. This book sets the record straight by providing detailed translations of de Jesus' unedited diaries and explains why Brazilian elites were motivated to obscure her true personality and present her as something she was not. It is not only about the writer but about Brazil as recorded by her sarcastic pen. The diary entries in this book span from 1958 to 1966, five years beyond text previously known to exist. They show de Jesus as she was, preserving her Joycean stream-of-consciousness language and her pithy characterizations.

The Unedited Diaries of Carolina Maria De Jesus

Literature & Fiction

Levine, Robert M.

Meihy, José Carlos Sebe Bom

Essays & Correspondence

Rutgers University Press

"Important companion to items #bi 00005749#, #bi 98007394#, and #bi 00005750#. Two historians retrace Carolina's life, especially in the years following the short-lived success of Quarto de despejo (Child of the dark), and reflect on what her life story reveals about race in Brazil. Includes extensive interviews with Carolina's children"--Handbook of Latin American Studies, v. 58.http://www.loc.gov/hlas/

The Life and Death of Carolina Maria De Jesus (Dialogos)

Biographies & Memoirs

Univ of New Mexico Pr

In the dozen years Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) lived in a São Paulo, Brazil, shanty slum, she survived by rummaging for junk. She also kept a diary of her abject poverty. Black, illegitimate, and poor, she suddenly became at age forty-six Brazil's best-selling author when a book drawn from her diaries appeared in 1960. An English translation, Child of the Dark, was published in 1962 and sold over 300,000 copies in the United States in a decade. Newsweek heralded her book as "a desperate, terrifying outcry from the slums of São Paulo . . . one of the most astonishing documents of the lower depths ever printed."
Collaborating with a Brazilian colleague, Levine tells the story of Carolina's life, giving particular emphasis to the years following her publishing success, and engages in a provocative debate over what Carolina's life reveals about such issues as racism in Brazil, the rigidity of the country's class system, and the process of constructing an identity amid constant degradation and poverty.

The Life and Death of Carolina Maria de Jesus (Diálogos Series)

Arts & Literature

University of New Mexico Press

Carnaval, carnavais (Série Princípios) (Portuguese Edition)

Editora Atica

A obra é o resultado de cinco anos de pesquisa sobre a maiorcolônia de brasileiros emigrantes fora do Brasil, concentrada em New York. O autor aborda aspectos variados dessa convivência, indentificando as razões pelas quais este grupo de pessoas decidiu deixar seu país.

Brasil Fora de si: Experiencias de brasileiros em Nova York

Parabola

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