Dismissed from her position as a live-in maid because she was single and pregnant at age 34, Carolina de Jesus finds herself making a home among the poorest of the poor.  In many countries, the city dump serves not only as a place for discarded food and material goods, but discarded people as well – in Brazil, it is referred to as a favela, and Carolina was one of several people who called it home.

Among the garbage and shanties built of scrap wood, metal, and cardboard, Carolina scraped by, gathering paper every day while trying to feed and defend her three children.  She writes on bits of paper every night, mostly a daily list of getting up, standing in line to get water, walking to town to gather paper, her children’s cries of hunger, and the favela’s fight-du-jour.  Men beating their girlfriends, women in catfights, and mostly, women screaming at or throwing things at her children.  She somehow wrote of these ugly scenes with a twist of wry humor and some very artistic metaphors.  Every so often, she would tell of buying or finding food goods – a day old roll that the children would have to share between them, some beans, and occasionally a bone or two if she could get to the butcher before the bugs set in.  There were also tales of people who, being too hungry for thought, would gladly collect discarded scraps from the butcher shop and be poisoned by the bacteria.  Death was a familiar character, not caring whether the one it came calling on had material goods or not – it never does.

The people in real houses around the favela petitioned to have the area evacuated, but where else would the poor go?  Politicians visited occasionally and brought food, but the occasions were photo shoots set up to encourage voting – once election season was over, the gifts were gone.  Churches tried to satisfy the needs, but the needs outstripped the resources, as is often the case.  Some churches came by to trade food for converts, so the people would gladly attend service to nod & smile & get whatever material goods they could, leaving the gospel message at the church where it seemed to be more at home.  Because of the diseases, the Department of Health came to investigate and report – they taught the people about food handling and hygiene.  They then provided the most absurd example of blind bureaucracy – they told these penniless people to have proper toilet facilities installed, complete with drainage to the sewage system etc.  Remember, the people in question are living under cardboard & tin lean-tos, backed and supported by mounds and bags and piles of rotting garbage.  A proper toilet would not make a noticeable difference.

Even among this rag-tag community of people, there was violence, lies, theft, and stereotyping & judgments based on variations in skin tone.  All were dirt poor, some gathered paper while others gathered glass, plastic, or aluminum, but they still found ways to declare themselves better than another.  Carolina was no exception.  Having three children by three different men and at least two more lovers alluded to, she still referenced with disgust the women who brought a variety of men to their ramshackle huts.  There also seemed to be an odd pride in her poverty and resourcefulness, as she had offers of marriage and opportunities to live a bit better, but turned them down to maintain her independence.

When she was 45, 11 years into her favela life, her situation changed again.  She met a reporter and hoped to sell her carefully written poetry and short stories.  Instead, the man was more interested in her daily notes on scraps of papers, and a year later, in 1959, this book, Child of the Dark, was published.  In the book, which doesn’t have the standard polishing and flow of a highly edited work, she displays quite clearly the ugliness of poverty, the fakery of politicians and the beauty of creation.  They form a delicately balanced braid that comes off as poetic.  This became the resource and she the poster child for exposing favela life to the middle and upper classes who were previously unaware.

There were more books published by and about her.  She and her children moved into a brick house, and there they were just as imprisoned as they had been amid the violence of the favela, because people continued to see a favelado family rather than the family of a discovered and published author.  Those from the favela who might have looked at her with some hope and inspiration for their own advancement were instead angry to find their lives and their true names broadcast around the world.  They jealously clamored of her selfishness because she didn’t share her newly begotten relative wealth.  Her daughter went to school and became a teacher, one son died of illness because they didn’t have authorization for medical care, and the other son bounced in and out of various forms of poverty, including alcoholism & drug use.  Though her story is still a common resource for Latin studies, her life was no more than a flash in the pan.  After the success of this book and a few others, Carolina ended up dying in the same poverty that made her famous.