Carolina Maria de Jesus - Early Life

Early Life

Carolina Maria de Jesus was born in Minas Gerais, a rural community where her parents were sharecroppers. She was an illegitimate child, fathered by a man who was already married. Therefore she was treated as an outcast during her entire childhood, and her aggressive personality did nothing to alleviate the situation. When she reached the age of seven, Carolina’s mother forced her to attend school after a wealthy landowner’s wife paid for Carolina, as well as other poor black children in the neighborhood. However, she stopped attending school by the second grade, but she went long enough to learn how to read and write. Little did she know at the time, these things would play a very important role in her life as an adult. Since Carolina’s mother had two illegitimate children, her family was kicked out of the Catholic Church while she was still young. However, throughout her life she considered herself a devout catholic, even though she would never be accepted by the Catholic Church. In her diary she often made biblical references, and overtures to God: "I dreamt I was an angel. My dress was billowing and had long pink sleeves. I went from earth to heaven. I put stars in my hands and played with them. I talked to the stars. They put on a show in my honor. They danced around me and made a luminous path. When I woke up I thought: I’m so poor. I can't afford to go to a play so God sends me these dreams for my aching soul. To the God who protects me, I send my thanks".

In 1937, her mother died, and she was forced to migrate to the metropolis of São Paulo. Carolina made her own house out of used plywood, cans, cardboard, and anything else she could find. She would go out every night to collect paper in order to get money to support the family. Once she got done collecting she would go and sell what she had collected and then go to the store and buy what little food that she could with the money. She would also find journals and old notebooks which she would keep and use to write in. She began to write on her day to day activities and how her life was living in the favela. This angered her neighbors to see her always writing. They weren’t literate so they could not read what she was writing; they just did not feel comfortable with the thought of her writing about them. Her neighbors were jealous of Carolina and tended to treat her as well as her children very poorly. As a young woman she was somewhat attractive and had many love affairs, although she refused to marry, having seen too much domestic violence in the slum. She preferred to remain independent. Unlike many black women in that time and place, Carolina celebrated her race; she thought her skin and hair were beautiful.

All three of her children had different fathers, at least one of whom was a wealthy white man. In her diary, she details the daily life of the favelados, and bluntly describes the political and social facts which order their lives. She writes of how poverty and desperation can cause people of high moral character to compromise their principles and dishonor themselves simply to get food for themselves and their families. There is no chance to save money, because any extra earnings must immediately go to pay off outstanding debts.