When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent (Camino del Sol) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0816549966 ISBN 13: 9780816549962

Publisher: University of Arizona Press, 2023

Synopsis

When Language Broke Open collects the creative offerings of forty-five queer and trans Black writers of Latin American descent who use poetry, prose, and visual art to illustrate Blackness as a geopolitical experience that is always changing. Telling stories of Black Latinidades, this anthology centers the multifaceted realities of the LGBTQ community.

By exploring themes of memory, care, and futurity, these contributions expand understandings of Blackness in Latin America, the Caribbean, and their U.S.-based diasporas. The volume offers up three central questions: How do queer and/or trans Black writers of Latin American descent address memory? What are the textures of caring, being cared for, and accepting care as Black queer and/or trans people of Latin American descent? And how do queer and trans embodiments help us understand and/or question the past and the present, and construct a Black, queer, and trans future?

The works collected in this anthology encompass a multitude of genres—including poetry, autobiography, short stories, diaries, visual art, and a graphic memoir—and feature the voices of established writers alongside emerging voices. Together, the contributors challenge everything we think we know about gender, sexuality, race, and what it means to experience a livable life.

About this title

About the Author

Alan Pelaez Lopez is an Afro-Indigenous poet and installation and adornment artist from Oaxaca, Mexico, and an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis.

Edition details

• Publisher: University of Arizona Press
• Publication date: 2023
• Language: English
• ISBN 10: 0816549966
• ISBN 13: 9780816549962
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Pelaez Lopez Alan