Personal diaries are fascinating resources for understanding the complex relationships between space, identity, and opportunity. An instructive example is Carolina Maria de Jesus’s 1960 best-seller Quarto de Despejo (published as Child of the Dark in English). The book contains observations Carolina recorded on scrap paper while fighting for survival on the margins of São Paulo in the late 1950s. Carolina viewed her informally-settled “favela” neighborhood as sitting far away from “the city”, even though the straight-line distance from her shack to downtown was about 3.5 kilometers.
Child of the Dark depicts Carolina’s day-to-day struggle to gather paper, scrap metal, and other sellable materials in order to put one more meal on the table for herself and her children. When I first read the book, I was struck by the geographic details Carolina included, sometimes down to the exact address where she found resources or needed to spend money. I wondered if a map of these locations could show how she navigated urban spaces to meet her basic needs. I also hoped that such mapping could show how she could feel so distant and alienated from the city.
Mapping Carolina’s activities first required the construction of a base map of central São Paulo the way it looked when Carolina lived there. Working with volunteer GIS students and alums, we created a digital street network by downloading OpenStreetMap data and paring it down to match air photos and print maps from the late 1950s. We also used these resources to trace water, rail, and streetcar networks. Using spot heights from old maps, we interpolated a terrain surface showing how Carolina’s shack sat in a flood plain.
The next phase of the mapping involved identifying places mentioned in the book and trying to locate them on the historic map. I used online newspaper archives, unedited diary entries published by Levine and Bom Meihy, a São Paulo phone and street directory from 1955, print books and maps in the Mario de Andrade library, and personal observations from walks around area. Using these approaches, I located 48 places from the book down to at least the block level. These are shown below:
Click here for an interactive map with sources
Categorizing the locations reveals unique geographies associated with personal tasks, scrap-gathering “work” tasks, and visits to institutions such as hospitals, government offices, and charitable institutions in search of resources and services.
The institutions and services, which potentially offered the most benefits, were often the most difficult to get to. Carolina had no personal vehicle and often lacked money to take the bus or streetcar. Walking was her primary mode of transport, often with a child and big bags of scrap materials in tow. GIS-based network analysis shows that it was well over a 3 km walk to reach the city center.
When mapping personal narratives, I have tried to apply approaches from feminist thinkers in cartography. These include positioning the map around the subject’s perspective, and putting the subject’s own words on the map. The following two maps attempt this. The first one shows a three-dimensional view of Carolina’s world pointed toward the city. Standard deviational ellipses calculated by the GIS show the general areas of personal activities, work sites, and institutions & services. Getting to resources near the city center involves traversing an irregular street network, crossing a railroad and river, and going uphill. This view helps clarify how Carolina could consider herself so distant from the city.
The second map shows selected events where Carolina found basic needs. It accompanies these with Carolina’s own words, as well as icons tailored to the book’s context. Map readers unfamiliar with the book can get a feel for Carolina’s experiences. They might see how the commercial corridor of Tiradentes Avenue served as a major source for paper scrap. Civic transactions and charitable resources appear more on the margins of the map.
A more detailed analysis and full appendix of sources is available in the following article, published in the literary journal Brasil/Brazil.
Thank you to Katie Lender-Aberle and Shawna LeClair for contributing GIS work to this project.