I'm Going to Have a Little House: The Second Diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus

In 1960, de Jesus's first diary, Child of the Dark, was published and almost immediately took on the status of a minor classic. A desperately poor black Brazilian woman living in a squalid favela in Sao Paulo, she had written, on scraps of paper picked up from the gutters, a raw, primitive journal of her life as a street scavenger fighting for survival. A bestseller in Brazil, the diary achieved international acclaim and the U.S. translation is still in print. Her second diary, published in Brazil in 1961, and now translated into English, is, as Levine notes in his useful afterword, very different from its predecessor. Here, as de Jesus is transported from obscurity into the harsh light of celebrity, she is invited to the governor's mansion, besieged for interviews and book signings throughout Brazil. She fulfills her greatest dream when she escapes from her favela shack and moves her family into a cinderblock house. But after the initial thrill of media fame, disappointments plague her. Ill prepared for her abrupt rise, she is bewildered by the constant commotion, harassed by unscrupulous demands for financial help and assailed by guilt when she encounters old friends from the favela. Her second diary, although not as harrowing a tale as her first, is nevertheless a vivid social document, recounting with stark simplicity de Jesus's ascent from misery. Five photos. (Sept.)