1. Laughter "Out of Place" -- 2. The Aesthetics of Domination: Class, Culture, and the Lives of Domestic Workers -- 3. Color-Blind Erotic Democracies, Black Consciousness Politics, and the Black Cinderellas of Felicidade Eterna -- 4. No Time for Childhood -- 5. State Terror, Gangs, and Everyday Violence in Rio de Janeiro -- 6. Partial Truths, or the Carnivalization of Desire -- 7. What's So Funny about Rape?
Summary
Donna M. Goldstein presents a hard-hitting critique of urban poverty and violence and challenges much of what we think we know about the ""culture of poverty"" in this compelling read. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Brazil, Goldstein provides an intimate portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas, or urban shantytowns in Rio de Janeiro, who cope with unbearable suffering, violence and social abandonment. The book offers a clear-eyed view of socially conditioned misery while focusing on the creative responses-absurdist and black humor-that people generate amid dai
