Child of the Dark - Carolina Maria de Jesus

This is a very difficult book to rate. It’s not a light book to read for fun or because the story is exciting. It’s a heavy book, and many times it gives you a knot in your stomach.

The book is written as a diary, showing the daily life of Carolina Maria de Jesus, a woman who collected paper to survive and lived in the Canindé favela in São Paulo.

I have to confess that in the beginning I thought the book was becoming a little repetitive because of the diary format. Many days looks the same. But after some time I realized that this was exactly her reality. Every day was a fight to find food for her children.

I think it’s even unfair to judge this book only as literature. It has grammar mistakes, events that starts and ends without much explanation, and a very simple writing style. But at the same time, it’s amazing to see what Carolina was able to write in the situation she was living. She was collecting paper from the trash and writing whenever she had some free time. I think this is part of the book and makes everything feel even more real.

I never went hungry. I never had to look for food in the trash. I never had to choose between eating or buying something else. This book is a huge reality check. And the saddest part is that it was written more than 60 years ago, but it still feels very current. There are still many people living exactly like this.

Anyway, this is not a book that I enjoyed in the traditional meaning of the word. But it’s a book that deserves a lot of attention.

I highly recommend it.