Carolina Maria De Jesus

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Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) was a Brazilian peasant who lived most of her life in the favela (slums) of São Paulo, Brazil. She is best known for her diary, which was published as Child of the Dark in 1960 after coming to the attention of a Brazilian journalist. This work remains the only document published by a Brazilian slum-dweller from that period.

Carolina lived in the prime of the revolutionary stage of Brazil. Being strong-minded and strong willed, Carolina later described herself as having more dreams than most; she wanted to make the best of being apart of the less fortunate group.

She was born in Minas Gerais, a rural community where her parents were sharecroppers. She attended school for free, courtesy of a local landowner, and learned to read and write; years later she remembered walking home, spelling out the titles on movie posters, and realizing that reading could be done anywhere, not just in school. She left school after completing second grade and went to work, first as a farm laborer, then moving to São Paulo where she worked as a cleaning lady. She often served in wealthy homes and salvaged newspapers and magazines that were being thrown away. As a young woman she was extremely attractive and had many love affairs, although she refused to marry, having seen too much domestic violence in the slum. She preferred to remain independent. Unlike many black women in that time and place, Carolina celebrated her race; she thought her skin and hair were beautiful.

All three of her children had different fathers, at least one of whom was a wealthy white man. While Carolina loved her children and tried to bring some hope and fun into their lives, she also regarded them as a burden, and occasionally physically abused them, particularly her oldest son.

At the age of thirty-three, in 1947, Carolina made her own house out of used plywood, cans, cardboard, and anything else she could find. In order to take care of her three illegitimate children, she collected waste paper and sold it for an estimated twenty-five cents a day. She also collected thrown-away notebooks to jot down her life experiences and goals she wanted to attain. Carolina accumulated twenty-six notebooks from 1955 to 1958. She wrote song lyrics, poems, plays, novellas and a diary in which she recorded all the events of her day. Her less literate friends were perhaps in awe of her writing, which they may have perceived (in common with many world cultures) as related to magic and the supernatural.

In her diary, she details the daily life of the favelados, and bluntly describes the political and social facts which order their lives. She writes of how poverty and desperation can cause people of high moral character to compromise their principles and dishonor themselves simply to get food for themselves and their families. There is no chance to save money, because any extra earnings must immediately go to pay off outstanding debts. Many, including Carolina herself, turn to alcohol and drugs to dull the pain of their existence.

She was discovered by journalist Audalio Dantas in April 1958. Dantas was covering the opening of a small municipal playground. Immediately following the ceremonies, a street gang moved in and claimed the area, chasing the children away. Dantas saw Carolina standing at the edge of the playground shouting "Leave, or I'll put you in my book!" The intruders departed. Dantas asked what she meant about her book; she was shy at first, but took him to her shack and showed him everything. He asked for a small sample and ran it in the newspaper.

Carolina's story "electrified the town," and in 1960 Quarto de Despejo (The Garbage Place, published in the United States as Child of the Dark) was published. It became the most successful book in Brazilian publishing history. Although written in the simple, ugly language of a favelada, her diary was translated into thirteen languages and became a bestseller in North America and Europe. The book was heavily edited by Dantas, and some critics suspected that the diary was a fraud; but the original manuscript was preserved and reprinted whole in 1999, proving that not only did Carolina write it herself, but that she was a much livelier and more poetic writer than Dantas' edition seemed to present.

When I die I don't want to be reborn
It is horrible, to put up with humanity
That has a noble appearance
That covers up its terrible qualities
I noted that humanity
Is perverse, is tyrannical
Self-seeking egoists
Who handle things politely
But all is hypocrisy
They are uncultivated, and trickers.

Her writings were seemingly her ticket out of the favela, and there are photographs of her moving from the shack into a small, clean brick home. She wrote a second book, I'm Going To Have A Little House, describing her attempts to deal with fame and fortune in a world where the higher classes were willing to accept her writing, but not herself. Her strong will and independent personality, rather than humble gratitude, were deemed inappropriate for a black woman of the slums. No one bothered to show her how to deal with ordinary middle-class realities such as opening a bank account or making a plane reservation, and she fell back on her earlier thought patterns and behavior in order to survive. She died forgotten and in poverty in 1977. Her childhood writings have been published posthumously as Bitita.