“Na noite de São Paulo você esquece que o dia vai nascer”: Visions of the Urban Periphery in Brazilian Graphic Narratives

Abstract

São Paulo reflects the conflictive issues of social conviviality. Drawing on Birgit Weyhe’s comic Dez verdades sobre São Paulo (2013), this article examines the representation of the Brazilian metropolis in two graphic novels that address social inequality and structural discrimination at the intersections of ‘race’ and ‘class’. In Carolina (2016), Sirlene Barbosa and João Pinheiro show how the São Paulo of the 1950s and 1960s affected author Carolina Maria de Jesus’s living conditions and writing. Marcelo D’Salete, on the other hand, addresses not only the challenges but also moments of solidarity in the city’s contemporary urban periphery in Noite Luz (2008). The article discusses how the works stage the city as a site of ambivalence.