One of the characteristics differentiating Carolina Maria de Jesus from her neighbours in the Canindé favela was her distinctive perspective on life. Though living among the lowest classes of society, de Jesus had dreams and aspirations not unlike those of any privileged person who enjoyed a comfortable living in Brazil during the mid-1900s. De Jesus believed that her dreams could be realized and, against great odds, many of them were. She stood by a different paradigm than her favelado counterparts, and lived accordingly.
At no point in de Jesus's life was she at peace with the fact that she was born into the lower classes. The activities she occupied her spare time with, her decision to avoid the many risks of a vulnerable life as well as her affairs, all indicated that while she was physically in the favela, her mind wandered free. "[W]hat set Carolina apart in Canindé was her penchant for spending several hours a day writing".[24] In an environment with high illiteracy rates, eloquent writing was a particularly rare accomplishment. She wrote poems, novels and stories. In the early 1940s, de Jesus began taking her work to editors in an attempt to get it published.[25] She persevered until in 1960, Dantas decided to publish her diary.
Among the many things de Jesus chose to write about in her diary were the people living around her. She describes herself as being very different from fellow favelados, and claimed that "she detested other blacks from her social class".[26] While she watched many of the people around her succumb to drugs, alcohol, prostitution, violence, and robbery, she strived to stay loyal to her children and her writing. De Jesus was consistently able to provide for her children by recycling scrap material for money or diving through dumpsters for food and clothing.[27] By saving some of the paper she collected, de Jesus had the material she needed to go on with her writing.
De Jesus offers a non-academic perspective on poverty and exclusionary economic expansion in Brazil, which was then rarely made by someone who did not come from the educated classes. The moment is particularly ironic, as it was a time when Brasilia, the symbol of a 'New Brasil', had just been inaugurated.[11]
Another atypical part of de Jesus' life concerned romantic affairs. Although it was not unusual for Black women at the time to seek light-skinned partners, since lighter skin was openly associated with higher economic status due to white systemic racism and anti-Blackness, de Jesus did not want to leverage relationships in order to improve her own situation. Her children were fathered by white foreigners from Italy, Portugal, and the United States.[28] A few romantic partners offered to marry her, yet she accepted none of their proposals, even though by marrying them, she would have been lifted out of poverty. A possible explanation for that may be that she did not want anyone dictating how she lived. Regardless of the reason, de Jesus remained true to her beliefs and did not conform to the way of life of the favela.
