These books are products of the near cottage industry formed around the life of the now deceased Carolina María de Jesús by Robert Levine. Carolina, as she is commonly called, was a poor Afro-Brazilian woman born in 1915. In the early 1960s she became an international sensation after the publication in forty countries of her diary about life as a slum dweller (favelada). Published in English in 1962 as Child of the Dark, the book has outsold all other Brazilian books, partly because it became standard reading in U.S. college courses. Thirteen years after her death in 1977, Levine and his collaborators went in search of Carolina’s story, and eventually produced a biography, web site, microfilm, revised editions of her books, and either published or projected the publication of formerly unpublished materials.
As a student once subjected to Carolina’s bleak diary, I faced the review of these...
