1. Donna Beth
1.1. New employer of Gloria, 1995
1.2. Belongs to the upper middle-class
1.3. Works as a social worker at Fundacao Nacional do Bem-Estar do Menor (FUNABEM: National Foundation for the Well-Being of the Minor), an institution that was home to “street children”
1.4. Pays Gloria more than the usual pay for domestic workers- 5 minimum wages per month for a six-day workweek- which took Gloria out of the lowest paid income bracket into working class
1.5. Upset after reading a letter from her daughter studying abroad asking for more independence from her mother
2. Gloria
2.1. Left her shack and moved in with her new lover, Mauro, together with her children that are pre-teens and young teens and not working yet; the others are left in the shack to care for themselves- do their own laundry, cooking, and daily cleaning
2.2. Early 90’s- she worked for middle class AIDS activist, most of whom who are gays and lesbians as “faxinera” or heavy-duty cleaner which includes cleaning the apartment, cooking, changing beddings, and laundry
2.3. Used to work 14-15 hour days, 2-3 hours spent on just traveling through buses
2.4. Used to worked for multiple bosses before working for Donna Beth in 1995
2.5. Childhood
2.5.1. Grew up in a large farm or “fazenda” , where she and her family were servants, in the town of Bom Jesus de Moreira in the Minas Gerais state
2.5.2. she worked in the kitchen as a dishwasher
2.5.3. Her family left for Rio in the 1950’s and moved into a small shack in Rochina- a favela; her mother worked as a domestic worker
2.6. Teen years to young adulthood
2.6.1. Eliana, a long -time friend of Gloria’s
2.6.2. They used to work for sisters, Gloria was 14 and Eliana was 11, who would get together for long weekends in their family estate in Petropolis- this helped Eliana and Gloria bond and become really good friends
2.6.3. both Gloria and Eliana left the sisters after a decade of service with nothing
2.7. occasionally cooks for Beth's daughter in-law who never learned to cook
2.8. resented Beth, even Donna Goldstein, helping out her daughter Soneca; felt that the reward that was supposed to be given to her directly was given to Soneca instead
3. Domestic Worker
3.1. Can be live-in or live-out kind of work
3.2. One of the lowest paying job in Brazil so that even the lowest earning middle-class workers can still afford to hire one
3.3. Employing of these workers is a status or class marker for the middle class
3.4. Having domestic workers cook and clean for middle-class citizens is their defining feature for their class
3.5. The more workers one can employ, the higher the prestige, socially or economically, he or she exhibits- it determines the person social place
3.6. Mostly women and most of these women are Afro-Brazilians
3.7. Don’t have regular benefits or health care
3.8. Symbolically associated with the dirty work that needs to be done in a household
3.9. many of their "bosses" talk about them with a mixture of love & appreciation
3.10. they're privy to their eployers' personal lives
3.11. they "talk differently" from their employers
3.12. sometimes spoken as a property that can be passed on from one employer to another; "to be given away"
3.13. considered as honest work but still considered the lowest form of employment
3.14. more women in the favelas desire any work but domestic work; seen as rebellion against their once set future of becomind domestic workers like many women in their class
3.14.1. Filomena, one of Gloria's daughter risk her life by working in a coal packing factory rather than become a domestic worker like her mother
4. Black Humor
5. Afro-Brazilian
5.1. Lowest paid workers
5.2. Domestic work is one of the few available to Afro-Brazilians
5.3. Many jobs would require “boa aparencia” or “good appearance” to disguise discrimination- to discourage Afro-Brazilians or “dark-skinned” people from applying for the jobs
5.4. Dark skin is associated with slavery and slavery with unpleasant tasks
5.5. In the days of slavery, even after legal abolition of it, domestic servants/slaves were expected to provide their masters and their sons sexual services and serve as “milk nannies” to their children
6. Middle Class
6.1. Defined by its ability to pay someone else to do manual labor- cooking, laundry, and cleaning, which was considered as most degrading kind of work in Brazil’s history
6.2. Everyone in this class is expected to afford to employ at least one domestic worker
6.3. “…supposed to make things happen economically and politically…” but “…is not supposed to be burdened with…manual labor.” (p.67, Goldstein)
6.4. Don’t usually know how to do basic manual labor such as cooking, cleaning, and doing their laundry and rely heavily on their domestic workers to do them- this became a positive form of status, not being able to do simple chores
7. Rio de Janeiro
7.1. Brazil’s 2nd largest city and important port
7.2. Lost its struggle for dominance in industrial and commercial businesses to Sao Paulo
7.3. In 1988, Sao Paulo’s household earnings per capita is 22% higher than Rio
7.4. Distinguished as city of extremes- beggars populated the outside of expensive and high end restaurants and boutiques; predominantly, only two class system with only a very thin middle class
7.5. Many migrant workers from other areas of Brazil flood to Rio, mostly poor women who search for domestic work in the city
8. Visit of the Belgian Monarchs
8.1. King Albert and QueenElisabeth visited Rio in the 1920’s
8.2. Rio wanted to impress the monarchs so they tried to hide the poverty by hiding the poor
8.2.1. The poor were pushed aside and attacked
8.2.2. The poor were forced out of their homes after being demolished for the construction of thoroughfares
8.2.3. The police increased harassment of the poor
8.2.4. Shabby commerce and Afro-Brazilian culture was forbidden
8.2.5. the poor were hiddne away in the Afro-Brazilian slums near the socks and on the hills
9. Modern Art Week Festival
9.1. begain in 1922 in Sao Paulo
9.2. financed by Paulo Prado
9.2.1. the mixture of the 3 races that exist in Brazil is the source of the "sadness"
9.2.2. published the "Retrato do Brasil: Ensaio Sobre a Tristeza Brasileira" (Portrait of Brazil: An essay on Brazilian Sadness) which examines the identity crisis of the elite; treatise on "whitening" of brazil
9.3. a moment when Ideas of “whitening” and the belief in scientific racism is in the process of trasfomation in Brazil
10. Live-in Arrangement
10.1. Architecture of the homes consist of two separate dwellings- one for the masters and one for the slaves
10.2. a typical architectural home is consist of a nice space for the owner and a small cramped space for a live-in domestic worker (which can barely fit a single bed and have a very cramped bathroom; so cramped that when the shower is on, the whole entire bathroom gets wet
11. Nilda
11.1. Daughter-in law of Beth whom Gloria occasionally cooks for
11.2. Considered by Gloria as “gente como nos” (people like us)
11.3. Gloria, due to the fact that she considers her as “gente como nos”, couldn’t call her Dona or even consider her as one of them
11.4. Much darker-skinned than Beth
11.5. Married well which brought resentment from Gloria
11.6. Was thought by Gloria to be someone who does not know how to act like someone in her class should
11.7. percieved by Gloria as a fraud rather than a class/racial ally
12. Soneca
12.1. One of Gloria’s daughter who’s responsible for caring for the younger ones
12.2. Didn’t want to become a domestic worker like her mother; wanted to become a secretary
12.3. Helps her mother out at Beth’s
12.4. Became pregnant with Silvio’s, a light-skinned boy/gang member , child
12.5. Lived in Beth’s maid’s quarter behind the kitchen after giving birth
13. Cida
13.1. a domestic worker who works for Renata's, a middle class, mother
13.2. have a love-hate relationship with her employer
13.3. had to talke care of her employer who has lost her husband and whose 3 daughters don't want the burden of being reponsible for saloely caring for their mother
13.4. treated "well" by employers and was given a flexible schedule that allowed her to attend to night school
13.5. very cincerned with her handwriting because she knows that a simple thing as handwriting can give away ones "class"
14. School Systmen
14.1. echos the social system
14.2. public schools for the poor and different levels of private schools for the middle and upper classes
14.3. public school in Felicidade Eterna
14.3.1. doesn't have the basic supplies
14.3.2. uncomfortable spaces; one can hear the other classrooms' noises; often teachers have to yell to be heard in his/her own classroom
14.3.3. most attendees don't give much effort in school becaus ethey are either given a lot of repsonsibilities at home such as cleaning, laundry and cooking, and most girls help their domestic worker mothers- also a form of "grooming" for domestic work in their futures
14.3.4. funded by government
14.3.5. highly competitive admission examinations to move from primary to secondary schools
14.4. private schools
14.4.1. usually accessible to middle and upper class only
14.4.2. children are able to concetrate in academics more because they don;t have the reponsibilities that poor children have to fulfill