‘You should go back to where you belong’: reflections on race, space and identity

Abstract

In an effort to explore black women’s geographies the aim of this essay is to reflect upon space as a category that can both differentiate and constitute racial identities. Where you are may also inform who you are, as practices of domination are spatialized. The study on black women’s geographies disclose how place gives meanings for black lives but also constructs blackness in paradigms of racism and sexism. To make possible connections on how space can constitute spatial (racial) identities, the biographic novel Child of the Dark of Carolina de Jesus ([1960], 2000) will be read together with the theoretical work of McKittrick on her book Demonic grounds (2006). Even though the purpose of this work does not allow us to engage deeply with McKittrick’s philosophic project on sexism-racism, it surely helps reading of Carolina de Jesus, a black Brazilian writer that identified as favelada kept being ‘put in her place’.