“There’s No Place Like Home!”: A Tour of New York City through Djuna Barnes’s Spatial Stories in Early Journalism and Poetry

ABSTRACT This article delves into Djuna Barnes’s early journalism and poetry, focusing on how her portrayals of New York City during the 1910s shaped her evolution from an emerging journalist to a prominent avant-garde writer. Focusing on her journalistic work before she moved to Paris in 1921, the study highlights texts that feature geographical references to neighborhoods in and around New York City, including Manhattan, Brooklyn, and the Bronx. Drawing on Michel de Certeau’s spatial theory—particularly his concepts of “strategies,” “tactics,” “maps,” “tours,” and “itineraries”—this analysis illustrates how Barnes’s work transforms the city into a dynamic space of lived experiences and resistance. By focusing on marginalized figures—immigrants, workers, and urban outcasts—Barnes constructs spatial stories that reframe New York as a network of lived trajectories. Her journalistic narratives create itineraries or counter-maps that reconfigure the city’s geography, thereby offering new ways of experiencing the city’s spaces through Barnes’s performative articles, elaborate illustrations, and avant-garde poetry. Ultimately, this study provides valuable insights for scholars interested in urban themes, spatial theory, and avant-garde literature of the 1910s, and it effectively reveals a social and geographical map of New York city through Barnes’s unique perspective.