Death Without Weeping Analysis

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Brazil is a vast country in South America that has experienced extreme wealth and income disparities since its independence in 1822. The uneven income distribution, combined with several other factors, is what accounts for millions of civilians living in impoverished conditions. The Northeast is the country’s most afflicted region, with an estimated 58% of the population living in poverty and earing less than $2 a day. The systemic inequality as well as lack of development and modernization has generated chronic poverty that has had detrimental effects on society in northeast and ultimately weakens Brazil.
The Northeast Region of Brazil includes nine of the country's 23 states: Alagoas, Bahia, Ceará, Maranhão, Pernambuco, Paraíba, Piauí, Rio …show more content…

Anthropologist Nancy Scheper-Hughes’ book, Death Without Weeping, is an account of her time spent in the northeast of Brazil between 1982 and 1989. Death Without Weeping analyzes the sufferings and recorded the lives of mothers and daughters, while examining the relationship between chronic child loss and poverty. While observing the perpetual famine and poverty in the northeast, Scheper-Hughes states, “The hunger of the zona da mata is constant and chronic, not much changed over the twenty-five-year period that I have known the region. It is the hunger of those who eat every day but of insufficient quantity, or of an inferior quality, or an impoverished variety, which leaves them dissatisfied and hungry. By contrast, the hunger of the drought-plagued serato, the backlands and the badlands of Pernambuco, is cyclical, acute, and explosive. It descends ruthlessly on people who are generally energetic, self-sufficient, and well nourished”. Scheper-Hughes spent 7 years in northeast Brazil, studying and analyzing the effects of the severely impoverished community, specifically mothers and their malnourished children. The ceaseless poverty in the northeast has had, and continues to have, damaging effects on communities and

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