Carolina Maria de Jesus had a great cultural impact on Brazil. Her decision to write about the struggles of the community versus strictly about her own struggles was something unprecedented in Brazil and was a perspective that was appreciated internationally[29]
De Jesus wrote another four books after Quarto de despejo, to a scanty success. She rose to fame and fell from grace very rapidly. This could be because of her strong personality, which kept her from getting along with people very well. Also, the Brazilian political landscape changed drastically after the 1964 Brazilian coup d'état, which left little room for freedom of expression. She still wrote poems, short stories, and brief memoirs, none of which were ever published. In fact, her obituary in a 1977 edition of the Jornal do Brasil speaks of her blaming herself for not being able to take advantage of her brief celebrity status and states that her stubbornness led her to die in poverty.[30] Still, her biography and memoirs provide insight into Brazilian favela life. While her life story can be seen as a struggle with tragedy, it is possible to regard her views as common Brazilian attitudes towards society, family life, equality, poverty, and other aspects of daily existence in the 1960s.
Her book was read extensively both in capitalist areas such as Western Europe and the United States, as well as in the Eastern Bloc and Cuba, the wide range of the audience demonstrating how many people were affected by her story outside of Brazil. For the liberal capitalist West, the book portrayed a cruel and corrupt system which had been reinforced by centuries of colonial ideals they also shared. By contrast, for communist readers the stories depicted perfectly the fundamental flaws of capitalist production in which the worker is the most downtrodden part of the economic system.
As Brazilian historian José Carlos Sebe Bom Meihy noted, "many foreign specialists in Brazil year after year used her translated diary in their classes",[31] which indicates her worldwide role in providing an uncommon first-hand account of 1960s favela life. According to Robert M. Levine, "Carolina's words brought alive a slice of Latin American reality rarely acknowledged in traditional textbooks."[32]
A biography about her was written by author Jarid Arraes as part of her 2015 cordel collection and book Heroínas Negras Brasileiras em 15 cordéis.[33]
On 14 March 2019, search engine Google commemorated de Jesus with a Doodle on the 105th anniversary of her birth.[34]
