Table of Contents

Chapter 1 Childhood; Chapter 2 The Godmothers; Chapter 3 The Holiday; Chapter 4 Being Poor; Chapter 5 A Little History; Chapter 6 The Blacks; Chapter 7 My Family; Chapter 8 The City; Chapter 9 My Son-in-Law; Chapter 10 Grandfather’s Death; Chapter 11 School; Chapter 12 The Farm; Chapter 13 I Return to the City; Chapter 14 The Domestic; Chapter 15 Illness; Chapter 16 The Revolution; Chapter 17 The Rules of Hospitality; Chapter 18 Culture; Chapter 19 The Safe; Chapter 20 The Medium; Chapter 21 The Mistress; Chapter 22 Being a Cook; after Afterword;

Reviews

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