My Life in Brazil

Maria Cavalcante-Fleming, born and raised in the city of São Paulo, Brazil, is a certified and licensed special education teacher for the department of education in Honolulu, Hawaii. She came to the United States of America in 1981. She comes from a large family of eleven brothers and five sisters, all living in Brazil. Her two children—born in Portland, Oregon, and raised in Kailua, Hawaii—are David Alfredo Fleming, thirty years old, and Amanda Marie Fleming, twenty-eight years old, who both reside in Oregon. Maria earned her bachelor’s degree in education in São Paulo, Brazil, and her master’s degree in special education in Honolulu, Hawaii. She has been teaching elementary school students in Hawaii for over twenty-six years. Before coming to America, she taught Portuguese and English in São Paulo, Brazil, for four years. Her hobbies include reading romantic novels, watching musicals and classical movies, and travelling. She visited several places: New York City, where she lived for two years; Washington, DC; Philadelphia; Boston; Chicago; Seattle; Portland, where she lived for four years; Niagara Falls; London; Paris; Vancouver; and Ottawa. Her favorite hobby is painting in acrylic on canvas boards. She has painted over fifteen pieces of artwork, which include seascape, landscape, portraits, animals, and still life. Some of her paintings, she created to illustrate this book. She enjoys writing books about her life, which she began in the fall of 2013. On her first book, My Life in Brazil, she tells her story about growing up in Brazil with her sixteen siblings. On her second book, My Life in USA - Part 1, she tells how she came to America on her own and survived countless obstacles as an immigrant who, at first, could barely speak a full sentence in English. She is currently working on her third book, My Life in USA – Part 2, on which she tells her story as a divorced mother struggling to survive on her own and how she has come thus far.