Child Of The Dark Summary

Carolina Maria de Jesus' journal "Child of the Dark" is a complete account of five years spent living in a favela in Sao Paolo, Brazil. Carolina and her children spent their days and nights trying to survive in the most horrific of slums while the rest of the nation looked down upon them, scolding them for being poor and complaining about how the residents of the favela were nothing but a burden on the rest of the world. Rarely did anyone take pity on the single mother and her young, defenseless children. Random acts of kindness were few and far between, but these rare gifts of a few cruzeiros brought great happiness and eased the burdens of living in destitute poverty for a day or two.
Though no gift was ever enough to keep the hard working Carolina out of the favela, she did everything in her power to keep her children nourished and as happy as possible without the help of the government or her children's fathers. (The father of her daughter, Vera, did eventually start donating a few hundred cruzeiros in the latest part of the 1950s, but it was never enough to do much good.) Carolina spent her days picking up and selling trash and trying to make enough to provide her family with food and some of the essentials while trying to raise her children to be good people and
Some of those who manage to go on living turn to vices such as alcohol or prostitution as a means of escape or income. These people have created even larger problems for themselves that they must deal with before they can even begin to find a way out of poverty. These people are looked down upon by higher classes in society, and often receive little or no aid, so they are forced to bring their children up in these desolate conditions. Their children often learn the vices of their parents, which makes poverty a cruel and unending