Cuíer (Calico, 4)

For the first time, and against the backdrop of Bolsonaro's emboldened far-right regime, Brazil's legendary and pioneering queer writers appear together in English translation.

This far-reaching, bilingual assortment of fiction, poetry, nonfiction, and photography--erotic and personal, revolutionary, hopeful, joyous, and bitter--continues the legacy of defiant queer expression in Brazil and demands its prolific, unapologetic future.

In fresh and poetic prose, Raimundo Neto brings us lesser-known narratives of queer life in rural Brazil, including the story of a boy determined to become the "harvest bride" at a the local annual harvest dance. Poet Angélica Freitas details a disturbingly familiar world in which women are divided into rigid binaries--clean or dirty, good or bad--with stark language that builds into utter absurdity. And Caio Fernando Abreu sits in a hospital dying of AIDS, meeting with angels and writing letters in which he repeats "all I can do is write" like a mantra. Spanning four decades, and featuring a total of thirteen writers,Cuíer reminds us again, as Natalia Affonso says in her translation of Tatiana Nascimento's poem:

...what we make

lying down is

also

revolution.