Customer Reviews

Child of the Dark: The Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus (Mentor)

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This book is truly an eye opener as to what it really means to be poor and hungry. I can't believe that someone with only two years of schooling could churn out such a masterpiece, the language and thought processes involved will leave you wondering with amazement. What suprises you is that in and amongst all the squalor, deprivation, fights and hunger she still admires the night sky, the birds, the stars, the beautiful weather. What a woman ! Most people in her position wouldn't have time to be thankful for these "free" beautiful things and that is what I found so touching. Her dedication to her children and indeed her neighbours will teach all us other mortals in the devleoped world what being humble really means. At times this woman cannot find a meal but when she has money and food she shares it with her friends and neighbours, wondering little if she will have a meal the next day. Her ability to keep going despite her adversities will shock you. Please read this book, you will aspire to be a better person afterwards.

This book is raw and angry, but a satisfying read nonetheless. Poverty, murder, fights and most of all hunger are the main themes in this book. But what keeps you interested is her wonderfull insights on life and her overwhelming love for her children. Toward the end it starts to lag, after all, it is a diary that was not meant for publication. The characters are scattered and it's a bit repetitive, but the important thing is she takes you into her world. That, in my mind, is the gift of a talented author

The autobiographies of poor people from places far from the middle class worlds of rich countries never used to appear in book stores. It was indeed rare that such lives, however interesting, difficult, inspiring or depressing would ever show up on the shelves. But such is the modern world that nowadays we do get occasional chances to glimpse other lives, hear other voices. In "From the Land of Green Ghosts" we could read of the life of a member of the Padaung tribe in Burma; in "Notes from the Hyena's Belly", we read about a small town Ethiopian. Both these men were not poor in their own societies, but went through the traumas of war and revolution before escaping to the calmer West. The adventures of Tete-Michel Kpomassie, a Togolese villager who made it all the way to Greenland, provide another type of narrative. CHILD OF THE DARK, a book written by a Brazilian woman from the very bottom of society, is yet another kind of these rare narrations, and moreover, was one of the first to appear. Carolina Maria de Jesus, a black mother of three with a second grade education, abandoned by all the men in her life, raised her kids in one of the worst slums of Sao Paulo. She picked trash and paper to sell to junk dealers, cadged bones from a slaughterhouse to make soup, collected squashed tomatoes from behind a cannery, and scavenged thrown away food items from the garbage of richer streets. Writing a diary every day helped her to persevere through years of hardship, to escape for a few moments, her hunger, misery, and constant worry. Through a chance encounter with a journalist, her diary was eventually published and she became a celebrity in Brazil back in the early 1960s. She left her hand-to-mouth existence and moved out of the favela forever. Her book is the only one of its kind from that time. [She had a hard time coping with her new life, though, and died in poverty in 1977.]

It's not all sweetness and light, not all a goody goody, morally uplifting Cinderella tale. She sometimes beat her kids, she slept with various suitors, abused "substances", and reported to the police on her neighbors (not that they didn't deserve it). She also has bad things to say about Portuguese, gypsies, and Jews. But OK, most all this is a story of human survival. De Jesus eked out a meagre living amidst squalor and constant quarreling, drunkenness and the sexual antics of the poorest members of Brazilian society, yet she bore up, kept writing, and made many observations about the society that produced such misery, the politicians who came around to ask for votes and then never appeared again. Brazil has no doubt changed in the last half century, but I believe this most human life story is still extremely relevant, both for Brazil and the rest of the world. How many Carolinas is it going to take ?

Caroline Maria de Jusus was born a[...] in poverty and went to only the second grade. She lived most of her adult life in poverty and her children were labeled [...]. She wanted to write and did. She became a writer of international reputation. Her book has been read by people around the world and in the United States. Her work stands with that of Victor Frankl in "MAN'S SEARCH FOR MEANING," and "BLACK ELK SPEAKS" an American Sioux, and with Frederick Douglass' NARRATIVE LIFE.

CHILD OF THE DARK, is a must read for anyone who wants to understand and to challenge the values and standards of a civilization (ours) that degrades human life for fun and profit.

This book is both an uplifting and depressing work. For anyone who has ever visited the third world, and especially for those that never have; this book is a must read. It is uplifting and inspiring in showing the heroine's sheer strength of character that gets her through a life that would most certainly kill most of us. Written without pretense, it is a brutal indictment of the negative forces that constantly try the human spirtit. Here the enemy is not one person, or an army or even the poverty that wreaks havoc on the lives of these people, but rather the world's tolerance and acceptance of the pain, hunger suffering and injustices that are created by a world where the the rich can justify their greed by demoninzing their own creation: the conditons that make people live in utter desperation. Poverty and ignorance are not romantized here but instead like in Buñuel's film Los Olvidados, Child of the Dark shows us that hunger and loss of dignity brings out the worst in people. It is depressing because we all know that places like this exist not only in Brazil, but in almost all countries on earth, and that we all share in the guilt of allowing such horror to exist.

I was extremely worried that this book was going to be boring or hard to read. It was actually quite understandable and enjoyable if you like first hand accounts of other peoples trials. I had purchased this book for a class but afterward I would recommend this book to anyone who would like to expand their knowledge of inner-city living.

the daily diary of the Carolina De Jesus describes a daily hard life of a woman, who picked up paper and metal everyday just to get enough money to feed her children. Also, in her diary she describes the horrible realatioship of the government to the people of the lower class.. The hunger and poorness of these people clearly illustrates in this book. The contest of these book clearly reflevt it's title, "Child of The Dark."

The dairy of Carolina Maria de Jesus described the daily routine life in a favela- a human garbage dump, house of the poor, the hungry, the desperate. The author illustrated the way daily life threatened these poor favelados.The hunger that invaded every shack, particularly hers, drove her to hunt for paper and metal in order to acquire just enough money to keep her and her children alive. The black population in Brazil was treated as none human beings. They were descriminated against by most of the white majority population. It clearly reflects the title of the book " Child of the dark."

Child Of The Dark: The Diary Of Carolina Maria De Jesus (50th Anniversary Edition)

I read Child of the Dark about 30 years ago. It is blunt, vivid and, on some level, inspirational. Yet I was struck by the author's lack of insight and utter disinterest in how wealth actually gets created. She was a doctrinaire redistributionist. This imposes as big an obstacle to understanding poverty as it does to understanding wealth, and she does not overcome the obstacle in either case. She is a meticulous observer of the outcomes of poverty, but a stubborn ignoramus as to its causes. After her Diary became a best-seller, and she made a pile of money from it, the adored celebrity author didn't take long to run through her new riches and return to the squalor from which she had temporarily emerged. This is discouraging to instinctive philanthropists who believe that if we were just compassionate enough, we could flood our neighbors with "resources" until they float up and away from their poverty. The culture of poverty is nothing to admire or glamorize; it is the most tenacious and merciless enemy of the poor. This is even clearer in the U.S., where we have lavished the poor with untold billions of dollars in redistributed income, only to see it fuel their most self-destructive impulses.

Loved this little book, it's the story of this single mom living in the slums of Brazil. It's sad but I like that this woman keeps going and tries not to let herself get pulled down by the others in her neighborhood.