Prologue: Sugar House
Introduction: Tropical Sadness
Chapter 1: O Nordeste: Sweetness and Death
Chapter 2: Bom Jesus: One Hundred Years Without Water
Chapter 3: Reciprocity and Dependency: The Double Ethic of Bom Jesus
Chapter 4: Delírio de Fome: The Madness of Hunger
Chapter 5: Nervoso: Medicine, Sickness, and Human Needs
Chapter 6: Everday Violence: Bodies, Death, and Silence
Chapter 7: Two Feet Under and a Cardboard Coffin: The Social Production of Indifference to Child Death
Chapter 8: (M)Other Love: Cultue, Scarcity, and Maternal Thinking
Chapter 9: Our Lady of Sorrows: A Political Economy of the Emotions
Chapter 10: A Knack for Life: The Everyday Tactics of Survival
Chapter 11: Carnaval: The Dance Against Death
Chapter 12: De Profundis: Out of the Depths
Epilogue: Acknowledgments and Then Some
Notes
Glossary
Bibliography
Index

“Makes a case for ethnography as an art form. . . . A compelling, if deeply disturbing, account of women in a Brazilian shantytown.”—New York Times Book Review

“Hauntingly beautiful. . . . [The] richly detailed qualitative analysis has thoroughly convinced this reader, at least, of her arguments linking maternal behavior and child death.”—American Anthropologist

Bryce Wood Book Award, Latin American Studies Association
Pitre Prize, Centro Enternazionale di Etnostoria
Finalist, National Book Critics Circle Award for Nonfiction
1992 Eileen Basker Memorial Prize, The Society for Medical Anthropology
Harry Chapin Media Award
Wellcome Medal for Anthropology, Royal Anthropology Institute
J.I. Staley Prize 2000, School of American Research