1. Afro-Brazilian
1.1. Lowest paid workers
1.2. Domestic work is one of the few available to Afro-Brazilians
1.3. 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
1.4. Dark skin is associated with slavery and slavery with unpleasant tasks
1.5. 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
2. Middle Class
2.1. 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
2.2. Everyone in this class is expected to afford to employ at least one domestic worker
2.3. “…supposed to make things happen economically and politically…” but “…is not supposed to be burdened with…manual labor.” (p.67, Goldstein)
2.4. 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
3. Rio de Janeiro
3.1. Brazil’s 2nd largest city and important port
3.2. Lost its struggle for dominance in industrial and commercial businesses to Sao Paulo
3.3. In 1988, Sao Paulo’s household earnings per capita is 22% higher than Rio
3.4. 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
3.5. Many migrant workers from other areas of Brazil flood to Rio, mostly poor women who search for domestic work in the city
4. Visit of the Belgian Monarchs
4.1. King Albert and QueenElisabeth visited Rio in the 1920’s
4.2. Rio wanted to impress the monarchs so they tried to hide the poverty by hiding the poor
4.2.1. The poor were pushed aside and attacked
4.2.2. The poor were forced out of their homes after being demolished for the construction of thoroughfares
4.2.3. The police increased harassment of the poor
4.2.4. Shabby commerce and Afro-Brazilian culture was forbidden
4.2.5. the poor were hiddne away in the Afro-Brazilian slums near the socks and on the hills
5. Modern Art Week Festival
5.1. begain in 1922 in Sao Paulo
5.2. financed by Paulo Prado
5.2.1. the mixture of the 3 races that exist in Brazil is the source of the "sadness"
5.2.2. 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
5.3. a moment when Ideas of “whitening” and the belief in scientific racism is in the process of trasfomation in Brazil
6. Live-in Arrangement
6.1. Architecture of the homes consist of two separate dwellings- one for the masters and one for the slaves
6.2. 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
7. Cida
7.1. a domestic worker who works for Renata's, a middle class, mother
7.2. have a love-hate relationship with her employer
7.3. 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
7.4. treated "well" by employers and was given a flexible schedule that allowed her to attend to night school
7.5. very cincerned with her handwriting because she knows that a simple thing as handwriting can give away ones "class"
8. School Systmen
8.1. echos the social system
8.2. public schools for the poor and different levels of private schools for the middle and upper classes
8.3. public school in Felicidade Eterna
8.3.1. doesn't have the basic supplies
8.3.2. uncomfortable spaces; one can hear the other classrooms' noises; often teachers have to yell to be heard in his/her own classroom
8.3.3. 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
8.3.4. funded by government
8.3.5. highly competitive admission examinations to move from primary to secondary schools
8.4. private schools
8.4.1. usually accessible to middle and upper class only
8.4.2. children are able to concetrate in academics more because they don;t have the reponsibilities that poor children have to fulfill
9. Donna Beth
9.1. New employer of Gloria, 1995
9.2. Belongs to the upper middle-class
9.3. 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”
9.4. 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
9.5. Upset after reading a letter from her daughter studying abroad asking for more independence from her mother
10. Gloria
10.1. 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
10.2. 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
10.3. Used to work 14-15 hour days, 2-3 hours spent on just traveling through buses
10.4. Used to worked for multiple bosses before working for Donna Beth in 1995
10.5. Childhood
10.5.1. 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
10.5.2. she worked in the kitchen as a dishwasher
10.5.3. 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
10.6. Teen years to young adulthood
10.6.1. Eliana, a long -time friend of Gloria’s
10.6.2. 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
10.6.3. both Gloria and Eliana left the sisters after a decade of service with nothing
10.7. occasionally cooks for Beth's daughter in-law who never learned to cook
10.8. 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
11. Domestic Worker
11.1. Can be live-in or live-out kind of work
11.2. One of the lowest paying job in Brazil so that even the lowest earning middle-class workers can still afford to hire one
11.3. Employing of these workers is a status or class marker for the middle class
11.4. Having domestic workers cook and clean for middle-class citizens is their defining feature for their class
11.5. The more workers one can employ, the higher the prestige, socially or economically, he or she exhibits- it determines the person social place
11.6. Mostly women and most of these women are Afro-Brazilians
11.7. Don’t have regular benefits or health care
11.8. Symbolically associated with the dirty work that needs to be done in a household
11.9. many of their "bosses" talk about them with a mixture of love & appreciation
11.10. they're privy to their eployers' personal lives
11.11. they "talk differently" from their employers
11.12. sometimes spoken as a property that can be passed on from one employer to another; "to be given away"
11.13. considered as honest work but still considered the lowest form of employment
11.14. 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
11.14.1. 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