Carolina Maria de Jesus: Introduction

Written By chimene jackson

The diary of Carolina Maria de Jesus has to be one of the most imperative, timely, relevant journals I’ve read in my life thus far because of the testimonies it holds and the circumstances through which she was writing the few years her journal covers. As a modern day Black woman diarist, I find her chronicle of testimonies to be absolutely necessary:  it fills a valuable place in the Black female diary literature canon where the Diaspora, colorism, poverty, politics and Black single motherhood intersect.  For any of my sisters curious about the efficacy of keeping their lives through the morbid, shocking, abject, tragic– and the moments of fleeting gladness that pierces through some of life’s darkest chapters, this diary is for your imbibing and validation.  As one who has endured times of housing insecurity, lack, hunger, and social marginalization, Carolina de Jesus’ diary RELIEVES me in a society that gaslights me.   The spectrum of emotions contained in her journal along with the setting in which she was recording her daily life makes her diary a critical lodestar for any of us heavy with grief yet urged nonetheless to keep our journals… 

A dark-skinned Afro-Brazilian woman, a single mother and “favelado” (the term for those who inhabit the favelas in Brazil), de Jesus journaled through destitution, her children’s illnesses from their living conditions, being surrounded by domestic and street violence, enduring the panderings of lying, condescending politicians, recognizing the hypocrisy of Christianity, and enduring the conundrum that is the de facto, invisible caste systems manifesting when one is  dark-skinned AND Black AND woman AND single mother AND whose children have different fathers. 


In all, I find Momma Carolina’s journal, Child of the Dark (often wrongfully categorized as a memoir, which is not the same as a published diary:  memoirs are recollections of one’s past from a single moment in the present, and the diary is firsthand accounts throughout one’s times, with accompanying dates.), to be a mandatory read for teastained women diarists for several salient reasons.  Firstly, because it’s a journal kept by a DARK SKINNED Black woman.  Let me explain.  In the early days of creating Vagabroad it was 100% impossible to find images of a Black woman journaling that were not posed, sanitized stock photos of corporate Black women. In response to this, I intentionally made images of my journal between my splayed brown legs, in my nutmeg brown arms, and being beheld by my brown visage. It was important to me to affirm the journaling practice as an inheritance of Black women, and furthermore, VGB as a Black woman’s space.  This has become all the more urgent as today, social media has furthered the agenda of featurism, texturism and colorism; amplifying the mulatto and predictably only declaring beautiful the dark skinned woman whose features are as European/Western as they can possibly be: desirable/ marketable body and features.  There is a celebration and celebritization of the dark skinned woman ONLY when she is amnesiac of her history and adjacent to/ a tool of capitalist agendas. Therefore, Carolina Maria de Jesus represents not only a witnessing against these layers of obsessions with whiteness, but also the weapon of the richly-melanated teastained woman’s recording and authorship against them in her private book.


Next, de Jesus’ journal is required reading because it exemplifies the necessity of context in our journals.  Context in the Black woman’s journal is the most honorable element/ tool of our entries, functioning as the setting of our journeys and the glue holding our entries together, pasting them to the times.  Context in one’s diary fills in the factual things that should not be left to the imagination:   What year is it? What faith/beluef system do you follow? Who is running for office? What is your ZIP Code? What street do you live on?  What major protests are going on (Think of silver, right marches, Ferguson, millions March in New York City back in 2015 …)? What building was torn down? What city ordinance was passed? Who has been convicted of a crime or what major cases are transpiring (think Anita Hill, OJ Simpson, Menendez Brothers, The Central Park Five, Laci Peterson, Chris Watts)? What are major issues of your day (Think abortion rights, The OxyContin epidemic, mass incarceration or HIV/AIDS)? Is the bed under the window or next to the wall? What brand of tea or coffee was being drunk?  What’s the weather doing?  What laws are being passed? What day was the 14th of June that year? Context in our diaries helps our future self tell time well, also equipping our future self to ask substantial questions of our past self like “what was I doing at that time?”, “How did my Personal ideology at that time in my life influence my (non)participation in that protest?” or “how did my belief system impact how seriously I took this or that event/issue?” or “ Why were my feelings so lackadaisical at such a critical time period?” Context is how we are able to have a fuller picture that holds us accountable to our past and present lives.

In an emulation-worthy fashion, Momma Carolina journaled about more  than the happenings of her daily life.  She made it a point to document systemic connections, rampant antiBlackness, insights on vices that detract favelados, the torture of struggling to feed her children, the dehumanization of cyclical poverty, the shenanigans and usury of politicians, the crookedness embedded into the design of the favela in society, and the consequence of societal rejects being left to their own devices in the condemnation of slum and vice.  Her entries toggle between plain-language, gut-wrenching realizations and blunt societal observations that excoriate politics and its arbitrators.  Her entries are raw and that rawness decries the vile nuances, barriers and culture of the favela.  She records the world around her as the conspiracy that is against herself as an impoverished, single Black mother– a blueprint for our own journaling.  From her tin can shack, Momma Carolina gives herself (remember, she was never writing for publication) the dignity of presence and narration with pen in hand, exposing the ploys of the dynamics surrounding her, and reinforcing her futurity and humanity in her book. 

Next, de Jesus’ journal is crucial to all of we teastained women because it preserves a firsthand account of a Black single mother whose children have different fathers.  It requires no explanation that the Black single mother is a pariah in society, and unfortunately there are still echelons to “acceptance” when it comes to a Black single mother’s socioeconomic status and/ or if her children have different fathers. I will spare you a LONG rant on our society’s uniquely-expressed energetic and systemic vitriol reserved purely for Black single mothers. Violently, the world becomes a different/parallel universe for Black mothers raising their children alone, and Carolina Maria’s journal preserves narrations attesting to various levels of this truth.  Today many of us are familiar with how Black single mothers are jutted into society’s underbelly like a subculture and low caste.  They exist in a reality of dystopia many prefer to not know exists, and yet perhaps contribute to its sordid engineering whether via judgemental assumptions, ignorant statements, and most violent: outright neglect and ignoring of the Black woman raising children with no little to no true support. I believe this mirroring quality of de Jesus’ diary is key:  If the reader is NOT a Black single mother they must assess how they would interact or exclude Carolina if she was in their social sphere today.  Before you feel pathos for this slum-dwelling single mother of three who’s selling scrap metal to buy medicine that will cure her daughter of worms from infected food, assess how visible Black single mothers are to you in your daily life and the support you are ready to show them– or not and if not, then why.  Momma Carolina’s journal may yield one to fall into the repetitive lingo applied to Black single mothers cyclically complimenting their strength and praising their ability to “do it all”-- a violent excuse to obey society’s command to isolate her as punishment for not maintaining her position as a partnered mother.   

 
“Throughout history, the slums, like the ghettos, are often sources of gutsy, raw talent and shock-value sentiments for removed, disingenuous journalists and publishers of questionable motives, hunting for their next big story. ”
 
 

(image source linked)

Finally, de Jesus’ journal is imperative to us because it is proof that we are not keeping our journals for now but for “when”.  Despite the global success of her journal after its publishing in 1960– the journal sold thousands of copies and was heralded as an essential text, an essential voice– Carolina received few royalties from the sales of her diary.  Furthermore, her publisher censured her journal entries before their publishing, removing or “softening” entries where she discussed politicians, the realities of being a dark-skinned Black person in Brazil, the horrible conditions of Brazil’s slums, and the violence of cyclical poverty and other systemic abuses experienced by those confined to them. As with today, as a Black author, despite her diary’s success as a published book, she was excluded from the literary space by other Brazilian authors, condescended for lack of formal education and patronized for her myopic perspective of Brazilian politics (yet who better to comment on them than one reporting from the dregs of society, living in direct proportion to politicians’ decisions in the slums…??).  Ultimately, Carolina was gatekept from upward mobility in the authorship space until she had no choice but to reclude to the countryside on a plot of land.  Excluded from literary circles and cheated from her rightful profits from the sales of her book, she was simultaneously a global success and ultimately, a poor farmer living out the rest of her days in Parelheiros, Sao Paolo, Brazil. Here we have a Black woman, born TWO GENERATIONS AFTER SLAVERY in Brazil, whose timeless diary validates our own experiences in the present, yet in her own day she was prevented from arriving to success and full self-sovereignty.  As morbid as it is, her life as a diarist is a reminder that we should not look for celebrity status out of our purpose (which she was NOT, by the way!):  you don’t know what the work you are doing today will achieve or encourage in someone in a similar situation many tomorrows from now. If you focus on the aesthetics of your work, hyper-vigilant about making everything present as magazine-fresh and extremely relevant, you might miss that it is ALREADY “doing” something in its future tense, for the ones beyond you who will need it the most.  Today’s aesthetics are not necessarily tomorrow’s ministry.  A presentable, algorithm-proof IG profile can be switched off at the whimsy of its owner– a handwritten book can be a blueprint for those unborn. Remember. 

It is terrifying that one can leave a legacy and still die in poverty and obscurity while many profit from their work.  Yet it is not a new dynamic.  This is too often the case with Indigenous artisans, Black outsider artists in general, as well as with poor, nascent writers such as Carolina Maria de Jesus.  Throughout history, the slums, like the ghettos, are often sources of gutsy, raw talent and shock-value sentiments for removed, disingenuous journalists and publishers of questionable motives, hunting for their next big story.  The persons themselves who are speaking, writing, singing, rapping, creating, etc. are little more than the consequential channel of the work that is hustled off by the unscrupulous purveyor, who subsequently removes the artist further and further from their ownership and profits until the artist is back poverty, or hopelessly awaits a payday that never comes they sit in the same environment where they were “discovered”.  Carolina, like many of us past and present, was ROBBED not only of her royalties but of her potential. This is a consideration we must hold at the forefront of our minds as WE benefit from the entries that Momma Carolia Maria de Jesus left not for the uppity echelons of society and its faux-empathetic discourses over cucumber sandwiches and high tea, but for those like you and I who need to know what another witness in dire straights of violence, poverty and single motherhood left for us to take her recorded testimonies with us.

Empathy practiced in encountering literature alone is vanity, draining one of their humanity for a false exercise. If we are to empathize with Carolina Maria de Jesus it must be because we have a humanity that calls and responses to her in tandem, with reverence—not because we revere the emotional surges experienced from her life notes only to continue in the same methods of capitalism, sexism, colorism and colonization in our lives.  Can you truly say in truth that we would include, support, provide mutual aid for, and love on a woman such as she?  Would you “vibe match your tribe” your way into excluding her from your social circles?  Would you feast on gossip about her at your dining table, as you throw away excess food and ask between swallows of girls night wine why she had “all them babies for different men anyway??” ?  Of the greatest technologies to literature is how it holds a headlight to the soul, and with this diary we have a set of beamers poised to inquire: if god were a Black single mother, would you recognize her? 

As a lucid, discerning diarist, Momma Carolina provides us with a valuable blueprint of what keeping a few indicting lines each day.  We see in her journal what it means to be living proof, evidence, and witness leaving indicting entries written in the midst of the morbid, as utterance of living through the detestable.  Who else is willing to join her in this task?  


Sources:

chimene jackson https://journeysoulfully.co
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