The Cautionary Tale of Carolina Maria de Jesus
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 2747237 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Robert M Levine (0000-0002-9499-9809, University of Miami, corresponding author) |
| Year | 1994 |
| Volume | 29 |
| Issue | 1 |
| Pages | 55-83 |
| Publication date | 1994-01-01 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | Latin American Research Review (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0023-8791 • E-ISSN: 1542-4278 |
| Publisher | Cambridge University Press (CUP) (PUBLISHER) |
| DOI | 10.1017/s0023879100035329 |
| OpenAlex | W2464919791 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 6 |
| References cited | 3 |
Carolina Maria de Jesús was a fiercely proud black Brazilian woman who lived in a São Paulo favela with her three illegitimate children (each with a different father). She had learned to read and write by continuing to study on her own after only two years of primary school. In 1958 fragments of her diary came to the attention of an enterprising journalist, Audálio Dantas, who helped her get it published. For a brief period, Carolina Maria de Jesús became an international celebrity as the author of the best-selling book in Brazilian publishing history. For many reasons, however, Carolina fell from favor: the rise of a military dictatorship in 1964, which led to an accompanying reaction against social criticism, and especially the ways in which she handled her fame and related to the press and the literary elite. Within a few years, she was forced to move back into the favela and scavenge for a living. A brief flurry of publicity in 1969 about her fallen condition prompted a slight improvement in her circumstances, but she was soon forgotten again. Carolina died in 1977, on the verge of indigence. Her complete life story has never been told, and most Brazilians today are unaware that a black favelada in the 1960s became the symbol (to foreigners, at least) of the struggle to rise above poverty. Most Brazilians neither read her books nor consider them noteworthy. Evidently, the author of what The New York Times called a "rarely matched essay on the meaning and the feeling of hunger, degradation, and want" touched no nerve in the Brazilian sensibility
Art · Art history · Cartography · Elite · Fell · Geography · Literature · Meaning (existential) · Political science · Politics · Publicity · Publishing · Sociology · Cultural, Media, and Literary Studies · Gender Studies · History · Law · Literature, Culture, and Criticism · Psychology
| Unique citing works | 6 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 0,21 |
| Citation span | 1997 - 2025 (29) |
| Citation velocity | recent |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |