78 books like Children of the Drug Trade

If you want to get a taste of what life is like in a Rio favela, then this is the book for you. Based on years of meticulous fieldwork, Goldstein documents the hardships endured by a woman she befriended who works as a maid for a wealthy family in the city. More importantly, however, Goldstein’s book describes in detail how life in a Rio favela changed as violence associated with the drug trade overwhelms the community. When she began her fieldwork, in the early 1990s, Rio was enjoying a period of relative calm. By the end of the 90s, however, Goldstein could no longer risk visiting her friends for fear of her own personal safety. 

This tremendous little book is about who has the right to discipline and kill. In an ideal world, the author argues, this right is monopolized by territorial entities we know as states. This is not the case in Brazil, however. In Brazil, or rather in metropolitan São Paulo, the right to discipline and kill is shared—hence the book’s title—between the various agents of the public security state and an extremely well-organized and powerful criminal faction known as the Primeiro Comando do Capital or PCC.

Luiz Eduardo Soares is a Brazilian anthropologist who served as the Coordinator of Public Safety in Rio de Janeiro in 1999 and the National Secretary of Public Security in 2003. As a consequence, he has a unique and very personal take on the relationship between poverty, drugs, and violence, and drugs at the local and country level. This book offers the reader a series of engaging essays on Soares’ experiences in office, revealing the near impossibility of reforming the system in the face of endemic corruption and a culture of violence in the public sphere. It is a great read!

Arias’ book is the product of nine years of intensive ethnographic research in three favelas (shanty towns) of Rio de Janeiro. This enables him to assess how local community leaders deal with the parallel power of drug gangs that become entrenched in their neighborhoods. Unable to rely on the police, who are violent and corrupt, community leaders are forced to find ways to coexist with actors who represent a substantial financial and military threat to their authority. In terms of methodology, this is a really impressive piece of research!

The vibrant, colorful cut-out style mosaic artwork first caught my eye—it creates a jubilant sensory experience.

In poignant observations, the author recounts what he saw as a boy from his window, in his favela in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil.

Although favelas might have problems with lack of services and violence, this story is a celebration of the creative spirit of the favela, where Brazilian funk was born, and where future soccer super-stars hone their skills.

This is a poignant glimpse into the poetry of people’s lives in the favela, and it captivated me completely.

Emma, the bored and restless translator into English of the works of a reclusive, once-celebrated Brazilian author, learns that the author has disappeared. On impulse, and uninvited, Emma ducks out of her Pittsburgh life and a relationship she has tired of, jets off to Brazil, and insinuates herself into the ongoing investigation into what has happened. Less a detective story than a constantly unfolding act of decoding—like Helene Hanff, Emma seems to have an easier time coaxing layered meaning out of words than interpreting gestures or interactions with actual people—Ways to Disappear is packed with doubts about humanity but soul-deep love of books, Brazil, and the process of translation. (Novey herself has translated the brilliant and enigmatic Clarice Lispector.) This being 21st Century American lit, the relationships that form feel less stable, healthy, and sustainable. And yet, in indulging her fascination with the mysteries of other places… show more.

Lucinda Riley had me before I even opened this book, as I loved the concept: Maia and her sisters, each adopted separately as babies by their enigmatic billionaire father, return upon his death to their childhood home: a castle on the coast of Switzerland’s Lake Geneva.

There, they discover that their father left clues about each sister’s origins. Maia, the eldest, an introverted beauty in her early thirties, learns that her roots are in Brazil, so she sets out to discover more.

I love this novel for its exotic locations, complicated mysteries, star-crossed lovers, and main character who finds her true self by searching her past.

The book is chock full of romance, passion, and history – my favorite ingredients! No surprise, I’m making my way through the whole eight-book series!

Drawing on her first-hand experience of living in a shantytown in Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, Perlman powerfully upends many existing myths about the urban poor as marginal in this classic work.

This book, which inspired me to look beyond the economic models at how people actually live, shows how shantytown dwellers are integrated into society, but in a way that exploits and oppresses them economically and politically.

They are not socially and culturally marginal, but rather they are stigmatized and excluded from a closed social system that is radically unequal.

They are socially well-organized and cohesive; they aspire to educate their children and improve the quality of their homes; they work hard and take pride in a job well done. They are aware of and involved in those aspects of politics that affect their lives. 

Griffith’s book is a study of capoeira teachers and students in the USA, how American capoeira students experience trips to Brazil to take classes in its homeland, and how their ‘pilgrimages’ are experienced.

Understanding capoeira outside Brazil is important for making sense of capoeira in Brazil and all over the world today. Griffith’s book, focused not in the global cities of San Francisco or New York where it was first established, but in an all-American city with few cosmopolitan characteristics, and few Brazilian residents, captures the world of the ‘typical’ capoeira teacher in exile and his or her students.

This is the go-to history book on capoeira used by scholars, and, by capoeira teachers and students. 

The author is a professor of Latin American history and an expert on slavery in Brazil. He has learnt to play capoeira himself and is friends with many of the famous mestres. Assunçâo’s love of capoeira shows through the book. He had done research in Angola seeking for the origins of capoeira there and made that trip into a prize winning documentary film. 

Because he is fluent in Portuguese he has been able to publish with Brazilian scholars, such as Mestre Luis Renato, whose research is not available in English. The book is a myth buster, and a celebration of the dance-fight-game.