In the dozen years Carolina Maria de Jesus (1914-1977) lived in a Sao Paulo, Brazil, shanty slum, she survived by rummaging for junk. She also kept a diary of her abject poverty. Black, illegitimate, and poor, she suddenly became at age forty-six Brazil's best-selling author when a book drawn from her diaries appeared in 1960. An English translation, "Child of the Dark," was published in 1962 and sold over 300,000 copies in the United States in a decade. "Newsweek" heralded her book as "a desperate, terrifying outcry from the slums of Sao Paulo . . . one of the most astonishing documents...