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Donna M. Goldstein presents a hard-hitting critique of urban poverty and violence and challenges much of what we think we know about the “culture of poverty” in this compelling read. Drawing on more than a decade of experience in Brazil, Goldstein provides an intimate portrait of everyday life among the women of the favelas, or urban shantytowns in Rio de Janeiro, who cope with unbearable suffering, violence and social abandonment. The book offers a clear-eyed view of socially conditioned misery while focusing on the creative responses—absurdist and black humor—that people generate amid daily conditions of humiliation, anger, and despair. Goldstein helps us to understand that such joking and laughter is part of an emotional aesthetic that defines the sense of frustration and anomie endemic to the political and economic desperation among residents of the shantytown.
Laughter and Life in a Favela Within the first few pages of Laughter Out of Place, I realized that Dr. Goldstein was going to embark on ethnographic analysis in a more personal vein. The introduction reads like a personal reflection of her time spent in “Felicidade Eterna,” folding in memories of the people she met into a journal-styled ethnography, of the kind introduced to us by Ruth Behar. I found Donna’s approach refreshing: a reader knew where she stood on issues, and there were no concealed objectivities in her observations. Donna’s personality comes through in her writing in her style -which does not back away from harsh realities, nor delve into idealized or romanticized metaphors for Brazilian music, sex, or style. I found large scale conclusions were lacking, but her small conclusions peppered within her dialogue were cogent: clearly understood and explained by her observations.
must-read for Brazilian on-lookers Laughter out of Place is crucial reading for those interested in exploring the hardships of Brazil and the spunk that keeps a population of oppressed and impoverished people dancing, singing, and always eager to laugh. Goldstein takes the reader through the gutters and alleys of a Rio shantytown, sharing years of experience as both a fieldworker, and a personal friend to many of the book’s feisty characters. Laughter portrays the unbearableness of shantytown life and how it is expressed through laughter, ridicule, and trickery that seem inappropriate to outsiders.