Published twenty years after the Pedagogy of the Oppressed (1970), in this volume Freire redefines the principles of that work while offering suggestive ideas and renewed commitments, always with a leftist orientation, which is especially significant in light of the failure of real socialism, which Paulo himself lived and recognized. This book incorporates the experiences that Freire accumulated throughout his itinerant and prolonged exile, during the Brazilian dictatorship. Here he tells, anecdotally and testimonially, in seven extensive chapters, how his life and his commitment developed, always vital, always fresh, always in search of coherence; It is a book in which he presents himself to us with his doubts, his anxieties, his learnings, his findings and his legitimate claims, to remind us again that the act of educating and educating oneself is in a strict sense a political act and not only pedagogical, with hope as a combustible species of soul.
This edition has a prologue in a personal and intimate tone by the expert in popular education Carlos Núñez Hurtado —who held the Paulo Freire Chair at ITESO—, in which he shares his own experience with the Brazilian during a meeting in Costa Rica, and with some detailed notes by Ana Maria Araújo, Freire's wife. on persons and situations mentioned by the author.