37 square feet that show Brazil's racist past

WLRN Public Media | By Ana Ionova | The New York Times
Published August 16, 2024 at 7:00 AM EDT

Ana Beatriz da Silva still remembers her first home: a tiny room behind the kitchen of a beachfront apartment in Rio de Janeiro, where her mother worked as a maid.

The room was barely bigger than a closet, hot and stifling, she said, with only a small window for air. Da Silva shared the cramped space with her mother and older brother until she was 6.

“We lived like that — stuffed in a cubicle,” said da Silva, 49, a geography teacher.

The experience convinced da Silva that she could never have a maid’s room in her own home. So when she rented an aging apartment in a middle-class area of Rio, she swiftly turned the servant’s quarters into an office.

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