This article revisits the writings of Carolina Maria de Jesus, in particular her book, Quarto de despejo [Child of the dark in the English edition]. It aims to reflect upon her writing (and her very act of writing) as a mode of elaborating her social condition of existence. The self-fashioning of her 'person' in her writing involves the processual perception of her social suffering and the establishment of a heightened conscience of her corporeality. Exploring the concept of social suffering, as an experiential and cognitive process, the article analyses the role of her painfully critical writing in grasping the world around her, in revealing her own self and in expressing her revolt as she becomes conscious of her social condition. It outlines, as well, the "embodiment of her social suffering" through the concept of a 'cosmography of hunger', which, in Carolina's writing, takes on a complex elaboration of cartographies joining together body and space, urban territories of deambulation and bodily organs. Her social suffering is fleshed out through writing into the possibility of agency, revolt and response, which promotes the transformation of her social condition of existence.
biography; corporeality; social suffering; subjectivity