At Home in the Street Street Children of Northeast Brazil [Paperback]

This book lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children.Through modest, sober, and honest ethnography, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why, given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns, there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions, street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researcher would be unlikely to pose. Guided by the children's questions, Hecht cuts through the hysteria and hyperbole surrounding street children in Brazil.Through modest, sober, and honest ethnography, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why, given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns, there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions, street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researcher would be unlikely to pose. Guided by the children's questions, Hecht cuts through the hysteria and hyperbole surrounding street children in Brazil.Through innovative fieldwork and ethnographic writing, Hecht lays bare the received truths about the lives of Brazilian street children. This book changes the terms of the debate, asking not why there are so many homeless children in Brazil but why - given the oppressive alternative of home life in the shantytowns - there are in fact so few. Speaking in recorded sessions that participants called radio workshops, street children asked one another questions that even the most experienced researchers would be unlikely to pose. At the center of this study are children who play, steal, sleep, dance, and die in the streets of a Brazilian city. But all around them figure activists, politicians, researchers, holó<