Table of Contents

Introduction; 1. Speaking of the street; 2. Being in the street; 3. 'Home' children: nurtured childhood and nurturing childhood; 4. Betraying motherdom: Maloqueiros and 'that life' in the street; 5. When life is nasty, brutish and short: violence and street children; 6. Curing street children, rescuing childhood; 7. Street children and their 'clients', conclusion: the ephemeral lives of street children; Appendix: the setting: Recife, Olinda, and Northeast Brazil; Glossary; References cited; Notes.

Promotional Information

This book lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children.

Reviews

'Hecht's work is graceful, thorough, and level-headed. This book is a much needed contribution to the literature of Brazil, of children, and of anthropology. It will no doubt be read and argued for years to come.' Robin Nagle, author of Claiming the Virgin: The Broken Promise of Liberation Theology in Brazil 'Hecht has been very lucky in the appropriation of the ethnographer's tape recorder by the street children themselves to hold their own 'radio workshops'. As a result, this work achieves something very special: the children themselves set the frame and limits of the otherwise inevitable and predictable outsider's sympathetic discourse on their plight. Never in ethnography has the agency of the subject's voice been so creatively present; never have the stories of such children who partly stand for contemporary Brazil been so plainly compelling.' George Marcus, Rice University 'A moving, provocative study that probes below the surface of everyday Brazilian life ... This is ethnography at its best: riveting, compassionate, pithy, handsomely illustrated with photographs, always aware of the larger social and political context.' Robert M. Levine, University of Miami