Bitita's Diary: The Autobiography of Carolina Maria de Jesus: The Autobiography of Carolina Maria de Jesus (Latin American Realities) - Hardcover

Maria De Jesus, Carolina; Levine, Robert M.; Vinkler, Beth Joan; Oliveira, Emanuelle

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 0765602113 ISBN 13: 9780765602114

Publisher: Routledge, 1997

Synopsis

Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977), nicknamed Bitita, was a destitute black Brazilian woman born in the rural interior who migrated to the industrial city of Sao Paulo. This is her autobiography, which includes details about her experiences of race relations and sexual intimidation.

About this title

About the Author

Robert M. Levine has published seventeen books on Latin America, five of which have been translated and published there. He has chaired the Columbia University Seminar on Brazil and is past chair of the Committee on Brazilian Studies of the Conference on Latin American History. He is director of Latin American Studies at the University of Miami, Coral Gables. He was elected in 1995 a corresponding member of the Instituto Geográfico e Histörico in Rio de Janeiro. He has lectured in São Paulo, Goiânia, Natal, Rio de Janeiro, Curitiba, Recife, and Salvador. He is co-editor of the Luso-Brazilian Review.

Reviews

An evocative portrait of a childhood of abject poverty, by one of Brazil's bestselling authors. Jesus (191577) was a literary phenomenon of the 1950s. Discovered living in a shantytown by a So Paulo newspaperman, Jesus, whose nickname was Bitita, became the bestselling author in Brazilian history when the journalist helped her find a publisher for a collection of her diaries, which appeared in 1958 (and later in English as Child of the Dark). Jesus quickly became the spokesperson for Third World poverty as her book was translated into many languages, yet she died in near-obscurity and scavenging for food to eat. This rather fragmentary book, written in the 1970s and only compiled after her death, is Jesus's adult recollection of her childhood in rural Brazil in the 1920s. Like all memoirs, this one suffers from a certain amount of revisionist history-making. Her supposed five- and six-year-old ponderings about race and the unequal treatment of women by men, for instance, are at times so astute as to be unbelievable. That said, this is an impressive book, not only for Jesus's searing portraits of poverty in Brazil--a picture that editor Levine (director of Latin American Studies at the University of Miami) claims never has been so honestly drawn--but for her depictions of the crippling power of the Brazilian class structure and racial and sexual prejudice. Only the most heartless would not be moved by Jesus's recounting of the rebukes she received from relatives and others as she tried to claw her way out of the very deep social and racial hole into which she was born. Certainly not a book for mainstream America, but invaluable for scholars and historians interested the real picture of rural Brazilian life in the 1920s. -- Copyright ©1997, Kirkus Associates, LP. All rights reserved.

An immediate best seller when it was published in Brazil in 1960, Jesus's Quarto de Despejo, the diary of a woman living in the slums of Sao Paulo, contained unusually vivid descriptions of the lives of the very poor. Its English translation, Child of the Dark (1962), was equally successful, as were translations in several other languages. The success of the book allowed Jesus to move out of the slums and continue writing. Through the efforts of her biographer, Robert M. Levine of the University of Miami (The Life and Death of Carolina Maria de Jesus, Univ. of New Mexico, 1995), some of these writings are finally being translated into English. Bitita's Diary (Jornal de Bitita), the last volume Jesus finished prior to her death in 1977, is a poignant description of her childhood in the Brazilian central interior state of Minas Gerais. It is important for providing a look at Brazil during the 1920s and 1930s through the eyes of an impoverished black child, a view rare in any country at any time. Sometimes simplistic, sometimes profound, this is a valuable volume for any Latin American research collection.?Mark L. Grover, Brigham Young Univ., Provo, UT
Copyright 1998 Reed Business Information, Inc.

Edition details

• Publisher: Routledge
• Publication date: 1997
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0765602113
• ISBN 13: 9780765602114
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 180