书名：Child of the Dark黑暗之子

作者：Carolina Maria de Jesus卡罗琳娜·玛利亚·德·耶苏
出版社名称：Signet Classics
出版时间：2003
语种：英文
ISBN：9780451529107
商品尺寸：10.7 x 1.5 x 17.3 cm
包装：简装
页数：224
Child of the Dark是巴西女作家卡罗琳娜·玛利亚·德·耶苏写的一本日记。卡罗琳娜生活在真正的底层，仅在好心人的资助下上过两年学。年少时便背井离乡，做过女仆，也曾流浪街头无家可归。这本书是她在1955-1960年住在贫民窟时写的日记，记录了一个少数人看到的世界。书中简单真诚的文字打动了无数读者，引起国际社会对穷人生活困境的关注。作者独特的生活经历与视角，为理解巴西社会问题提供了一个全新的角度。

The powerful firsthand account of life in the streets of São Paulo that drew international attention to the plight of the poor.
Includes eight pages of photographs and an afterword by Robert M. Levine
Translated from the Portuguese by David S. Clair

Review
“Written between 1955 and 1960, Child of the Dark is the daily journal of an artist, a writer who, as the single mother of three young children, supports her family by picking through garbage for paper and scraps to sell. They live in a cardboard and wood-scrap shack in a Brazilian slum called the favelas, where there is no plumbing, and one public cold-water spigot is the only clean water source for several hundred people. Her journal documents the lives favelados are forced to live.... Carolina de Jesus is a poet of intense dignity.”  — 500 Great Books by Women

“A haunting chronicle...a dramatic document of the dispossessed that both shocks and moves the reader.”  — New York Herald Tribune
“It is a minor classic—because it is one of the very few books that have ever been written about the lowest and the poorest, les misérables, by one of themselves.”  — Horizon

“It is both an ugly book and a touchingly beautiful book. It carries protest and it carries compassion. There is even bitter humor. As a fast-paced and strangely observant account of sheer misery, Child of the Dark is an immensely disturbing study of what can happen to a segment of the population of one of the world's potentially wealthiest nations... a rarely matched essay on the meaning and feeling of hunger, degradation, and want.”  — The New York Times Book Review
Carolina Maria de Jesus,a Brazilian woman with only two years of schooling, was the mother of three illegitimate children, each born of a different father. This story of her life in São Paulo stands as a vivid, incendiary social document. With stark simplicity, Carolina describes her squalid neighborhood, the favela, and tells how she lived hand to mouth. To keep herself and her children barely alive, to stave off their ever-present hunger, Carolina must scavenge for scraps of metal and paper in the gutter to sell. Her story is a witness to the vicious fights, the knifings, and the sordid sex of the favelados—prisoners of poverty, prey of the unscrupulous, and the breeders of revolution.

Robert M. Levine devoted his career to Brazilian social history. He chaired the National Committee on Brazilian Studies and the Columbia University Seminar on Brazil and was director of the Center for Latin American Studies, University of Miami. His major books include Vale of Tears and Father of the Poor? Vargas and His Era.
July 15, 1955 The birthday of my daughter Vera Eunice. I wanted to buy a pair of shoes for her, but price of food keeps us from realizing our desires. Actually we are slaves to the cost of living. I found a pair of shoes in the garbage, washed them, and patched them for her to wear.

I didn’t have one cent to buy bread. So I washed three bottles and traded them to Arnaldo. He kept the bottles and gave me bread. Then I wait to sell my paper. I received 65 cruzeiros. I spent 20 cruzeiros for meat. I got one kilo of ham and one kilo of sugar and spent six cruzeiros on cheese. And the money was gone.
I was will all day. I thought I had a cold. At night my chest pained me. I started to cough. I decided not to go at night to look for paper. I searched for my Job. He was at Felisberto de Carvalho street near the market. A bus had knocked a boy Into the sidewalk and a crowd gathered. Job was in the middle of it all. I poked him a couple of times and within five minute he was home.
I washed the children, put them to bed, then washed myself and went to bed. I wilted until 11:00 for a certain someone. He didn’t come. I took an aspirin and laid down again. When I awoke the aim was sliding in space. My daughter Vera Eunice said: “Go get some water, Mother!”
July 16  I got up and obeyed Vera Eunice. I went to get the water. I made coffee. I told the children that I didn’t have any bread, that they would have to drink their coffee plain and eat meat with farinha. I was feeling ill and decided to cure myself. I stuck my finger down my throat twice, vomited, and knew I was under the evil eye. The upset feeling left and I went to Senhor Manuel, carrying some cans to sell. Everything that I find in the garbage I sell. He gave me 13 cruzeiros. I kept thinking that I had to buy bread, soap, and milk for Vera Eunice. The 13 cruzeiros wouldn’t make it. I returned home, or rather to my hack, nervous and exhausted. I thought of the worrisome life that I led. Carrying paper, washing clothes for the children, staying in the skeet all day long. Yet I’m always lacking things, Vera doesn’t have shoes and she doesn’t like to go barefoot. For at least two years I’ve wanted to buy a meat grinder. And a sewing machine.
I came home and made lunch for the two boys. Rice, beam, and meat, and I’m going out to look for paper. I left the children, told them to play in the yard and net go into the meet, because the terrible neighbors I have won’t leave my children alone. I was feeling ill and wished I could lie down. But the poor don’t rest nor are they permitted the pleasure of relaxation. I was nervous inside, cursing my luck. I collected two sacks full of paper. Afterward I went back and gathered up some scrap metal, some cans, and some kindling wood. As I walked I thought—when I return to the favela there is going to be something new. Maybe Dona Rose or the insolent Angel Mary fought with my children. I found Vera Eunice sleeping and the boys playing In the street. I thought: It’s 2:00. Maybe I’m going to get through this day without anything happening. Job told me that the suck that gives out money was s to give out food. 1 took a sack and hurried out.