Cuíer
$16.95
Out of stock
Additional Info
- ISBN: 978-1-949641-18-9
- Size: 6" x 7"
- Pages: 344
- Publication Date: September 28, 2021
- Distributed By: Publishers Group West
“A concise and enlightening overview of the last fifty years of LGBTQ literature from South America’s largest country. Spanning Brazil’s regional boundaries and including legends such as Ana Cristina Cesar, Caio Fernando Abreu, and Wilson Bueno, as well as newer voices such as Marcio Junqueira, Cristina Judar, and Angélica Freitas among many others, Cuíer is nothing less than divine!” —John Keene, author of Counternarratives
“The latest offering from Two Lines Press’s chic Calico series is, like all its predecessors, expansively and thoughtfully curated…it will not deign to explain itself to us, if it does not want to. And this quality might well characterize all of the books in Two Lines’ Calico series, but I find it especially apt here—in the lives of people for whom mystery might be a form of survival.” —Asymptote
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.
Table of Contents
Other
Três cartas para além dos muros | Three Letters for beyond the Walls
Caio Fernando Abreu
One of the most influential and original Brazilian writers of short fiction of the 1980s and ’90s, Caio Fernando Abreu is the author of twelve story collections set and published during the military dictatorship and the AIDS epidemic in Brazil. He has been awarded major literary prizes, including the prestigious Jabuti Prize for Fiction a total of three times. He died of AIDS in Porto Alegre in 1996. He was forty-seven years old.
Books
Ed Moreno
Ed Moreno is a writer and translator from Santa Fe, New Mexico. He is a Lambda Literary Fellow and the recipient of a Bread Loaf Translators’ Conference scholarship. His work has appeared in Words Without Borders, the Nashville Review, Foglifter, Blithe House Quarterly, and Cleis Press’s “Best Gay” series. He is currently writing his first novel.
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Terça-feira gorda | Fat Tuesday
Caio Fernando Abreu
One of the most influential and original Brazilian writers of short fiction of the 1980s and ’90s, Caio Fernando Abreu is the author of twelve story collections set and published during the military dictatorship and the AIDS epidemic in Brazil. He has been awarded major literary prizes, including the prestigious Jabuti Prize for Fiction a total of three times. He died of AIDS in Porto Alegre in 1996. He was forty-seven years old.
Books
Bruna Dantas Lobato
Bruna Dantas Lobato is a fiction writer and translator. Her fiction has appeared in The New Yorker, Guernica, A Public Space, and The Common. She was awarded the 2023 National Book Award in Translated Literature for The Words that Remain by Stênio Gardel. Originally from Natal, Brazil, she lives in Iowa and teaches at Grinnell College. Her debut novel, Blue Light Hours, is forthcoming in October 2024 from Grove Atlantic. (Photo Credit: Ashley Pieper)
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Uma mulher limpa | A Clean Woman
Carol Bensimon
Carol Bensimon was born in the southern Brazilian city of Porto Alegre, in 1982. She is the author of the story collection Pó de parede and three novels, Sinuca embaixo d’água, O clube dos jardineiros de Fumaça, and Todos nós adorávamos caubóis, the latter published in English translation as We All Loved Cowboys (Transit Books). In 2012, Carol was selected by Granta as one of the Best Young Brazilian Novelists. She lives in Mendocino, California.
Books
Hilary Kaplan
Hilary Kaplan translated Angélica Freitas’s Rilke Shake, which won the National Translation Award and Best Translated Book Award and was a finalist for the PEN Award for Poetry in Translation in 2016. Her additional translations include Marília Garcia’s The Territory Is Not the Map, Paloma Vidal’s Ghosts, and poems by Ricardo Domeneck and Claudia Roquette-Pinto. She has received an NEA Translation fellowship, a PEN Translation Fund award, and a Rumos Literatura fellowship from Itaú Cultural.
Books
Uma casa nova | A New House
Julia Sanches
Julia Sanches is a translator of Portuguese, Spanish, and Catalan. She has translated works by Susana Moreira Marques, Dolores Reyes, Daniel Galera, and Eva Baltasar, among others. Her shorter translations have appeared in various magazines and periodicals, including Words Without Borders, Granta, Tin House, and Guernica. A founding member of Cedilla & Co., Julia sits on the Council of the Authors Guild.
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sábado | saturday
Raimundo Neto
Raimundo Neto is a young author already widely lauded for his rhythmic and at times claustrophobic prose. His work interrogates the struggles and joys of femininity across genders, and how it is constrained or cultivated by family, partners, and passersby. His debut short story collection, Todo esse amor que inventamos para nós, takes inspiration in part from his own experiences growing up femme in Brazil’s largely rural and working-class Northeast region.
Books
A tia de Lalinha | Lalinha’s Auntie
Raimundo Neto
Raimundo Neto is a young author already widely lauded for his rhythmic and at times claustrophobic prose. His work interrogates the struggles and joys of femininity across genders, and how it is constrained or cultivated by family, partners, and passersby. His debut short story collection, Todo esse amor que inventamos para nós, takes inspiration in part from his own experiences growing up femme in Brazil’s largely rural and working-class Northeast region.
Books
Adrian Minckley
Adrian Minckley is a media and literary translator; she lives and works along the Rio Grande.
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A noiva | The Harvest Bride
Adrian Minckley
Adrian Minckley is a media and literary translator; she lives and works along the Rio Grande.
Books
cuíer paradiso | cuíer paradiso
Natalia Affonso
Natalia Affonso is a translator, teacher, researcher, and activist who sometimes writes poetry as well. She’s from Rio de Janeiro, where she created and hosted the literary salon Sapatão & Ficção. She holds an MA in English-language literature and is currently pursuing her PhD in comparative literature at UC Irvine, focusing on Caribbean and Brazilian queer/cuíer/lesbian literature.
Books
Ana Cristina Cesar
Ana Cristina César was a poet and translator from Rio de Janeiro. She had written since childhood and developed a strong interest in English literature. She spent some time in England in 1968 and, on returning to Brazil, she became a published author of note. The 1970s and early 1980s were the peak of her poetic career. She returned to England in 1983. One of the authors she admired was Sylvia Plath, whom she shared some commonalities with, in temperament and fate. She died in 1983 by jumping out of a window at her parents’ apartment, in Rio de Janeiro. (photo credit: João Almino)
Books
o amor é uma tecnologia de guerra (cientistas sub notificam arma-biológica) indestrutível:: | love is a war technology (scientists underreport bioweapon) that is indestructible::
Edgar Garbelotto
Edgar Garbelotto is a writer and translator born in Brazil and based in the U.S. for the past 20 years. His translation of João Gilberto Noll’s novel Lord was published by Two Lines Press in 2019. His work has appeared in the Kenyon Review Online, Asymptote, Ninth Letter, Little Patuxent Review, and elsewhere. He holds an MFA in Creative Writing from the University of Illinois. Terra Incognita, written in both Portuguese and English, is his debut novel.
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Elisa Wouk Almino
Elisa Wouk Almino is translating previously unpublished letters by Ana Cristina Cesar and the poetry related to these letters. She is the translator of This House by Ana Martins Marques (Scrambler Books) in addition to translating Paulo Leminski, Luciany Aparecida, Caio Fernando Abreu, among others. She is a senior editor at Hyperallergic and the editor of Alice Trumbull Mason: Pioneer of American Abstraction (Rizzoli). She teaches art criticism at Catapult and translation at UCLA Extension. (photo credit: Melissa Golinsky)
Books
Talhos | Gashes
Cristina Judar
Cristina Judar is a writer from São Paulo. Her award-winning books Roteiros para uma vida curta and Oito do Sete challenge literary categories, traversing boundaries between poetry and prose. She has also written Questions for a Live Writing at the Queen Mary University of London and co-organized the anthologies A resistência dos vaga-lumes and Pandemônio.
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manifesta queerlombola, ou tecnologia / ancestral / de cura / amor / y de / prazer: | queerlombola manifest, or ancestral / healing / love / ’n / pleasure technology:
Cristina Judar
Cristina Judar is a writer from São Paulo. Her award-winning books Roteiros para uma vida curta and Oito do Sete challenge literary categories, traversing boundaries between poetry and prose. She has also written Questions for a Live Writing at the Queen Mary University of London and co-organized the anthologies A resistência dos vaga-lumes and Pandemônio.
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Photographs by Igor Furtado
Ricardo Domeneck
Ricardo Domeneck is a poet and performer. Born in Brazil in 1977, he currently lives and works in Berlin, Germany. He has published nine collections of poetry and two collections of prose in Brazil, and translations of his work have been published in Germany, Spain, and the Netherlands. In addition to his own work, he has collaborated with Brazilian and German musicians such as Tetine, Lea Porcelain, Nelson Bell, and Francisco Bley.
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Lara Norgaard
Lara Norgaard is an essayist and literary translator. She has published nonfiction and literary criticism in Public Books, the Jakarta Post, Peixe-elétrico, and the Transpacific Literary Project, and translations from the Spanish, Portuguese, and Indonesian in Asymptote. She is currently pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at Harvard University, where she focuses on post-dictatorship Latin American and Southeast Asian literatures.
Books
Acenos e afagos | Hugs and Cuddles
Lara Norgaard
Lara Norgaard is an essayist and literary translator. She has published nonfiction and literary criticism in Public Books, the Jakarta Post, Peixe-elétrico, and the Transpacific Literary Project, and translations from the Spanish, Portuguese, and Indonesian in Asymptote. She is currently pursuing a PhD in comparative literature at Harvard University, where she focuses on post-dictatorship Latin American and Southeast Asian literatures.
Books
Luvas de pelica | Kid Gloves
Farrina | Farrina
o mão #7 | hand #7
o mão #8 | hand #8
o mão #23 | hand #23
o mão #87 | hand #87
o mão #88 | hand #88
O irascível senhor Hannes | The Irascible Mr. Hannes
À terra que sobrar | Toward the Earth That Will Remain
Jardim de begônias | Garden of Begonias
“Eu sei que você espera…” | “I know you are hoping for a…”
Nosso desnaturado habitat | Our denatured habitat
Timidez em linho | Shyness in linen
Praise
“A valuable addition to the significant body of gay, lesbian, and queer Brazilian literature, foremost because of the outstanding selection of writers it brings together…Cuíer’s very diverse voices not only represent male gay or lesbian desire but, moving way beyond binary limitations, give expression to the full spectrum of human sexuality and queer identities, including those that refuse any such identification.…A precious gem.” —World Literature Today
“The latest offering from Two Lines Press’ chic Calico series is, like all its predecessors, expansively and thoughtfully curated…it will not deign to explain itself to us, if it does not want to. And this quality might well characterise all of the books in Two Lines’ Calico series, but I find it especially apt here—in the lives of people for whom mystery might be a form of survival.” —Asymptote
“This anthology of translations is as much a gift as a collection, attempting to encapsulate the multitude of experiences that make up queer Brazil. Poetry and prose from some of Brazil’s most profound writers appears on the page in the original Portuguese and in English translation, underscoring the importance of translation as an act of seeing and understanding.…A must-read for those seeking to expand their global world view of queer life and literature.” —Emily Dziuban, Booklist
“This eclectic bilingual anthology from queer Brazilian writers, both living and dead, is as expansive and full of life as the country itself…enticing and poignant.” —Publishers Weekly
“A lively collection…American readers will easily connect with the universality of queer experiences portrayed, from romance, to coming out, to struggling with identity and with AIDS, but will find them enlivened and made fresh again by uniquely Brazilian details.” —Passport
“A concise and enlightening overview of the last fifty years of LGBTQ literature from South America’s largest country. Spanning Brazil’s regional boundaries and including legends such as Ana Cristina Cesar, Caio Fernando Abreu, and Wilson Bueno, as well as newer voices such as Marcio Junqueira, Cristina Judar, and Angélica Freitas among many others, Cuíer is nothing less than divine!” —John Keene, author of Counternarratives
“Oppression and liberation, struggle and joy, lots of sex and community, complicated childhood awakenings, coming-out euphorias, adulthood analyses—Cuíer merges the universality of queer experiences with the specificity of the Brazilian culture, creating an inspiring collection of angles and stances, forms and attitudes, that carries through to the very last, moving piece.” —Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir
“Fabulously queer in both senses of the word: it’s unlike anything you’ve encountered before, yet ever familiar.” —Rabih Alameddine, author of The Wrong End of the Telescope
“Cuíer: Queer Brazil is a thrilling collection of joyous and ruinous life in all of its contradictions. Like Kafka’s parables or Lispector’s The Passion According to G.H., the work in this volume makes a profound ethical statement: to depict honestly one’s life at oblique angles, often beautiful, often terrifying, can be both personal and revolutionary.” —Patrick Cottrell, editor of McSweeney’s 62: The Queer Fiction Issue
“This glorious collection of poetry, art, essays, and stories shows queer Brazil in its complex and multifaceted representation. You’ll be blessed with new authors to fall in love with and see a side of Brazil hidden so often from our eyes.” —Hannah Oliver Depp
“A truly wonderful collection of Brazilian queer writing, a perfect introduction to voices and narratives that otherwise might not have made it to the US readers.” —Anton Bogomazov, Politics & Prose (Washington, D.C.)
Praise for the Calico Series
“A fantastic and deeply philosophical addition to Two Lines’ Calico series of collected works in translation.” —Booklist, on Elemental
“[Elemental’s] mission is to show, by removing these texts from their natural habitats and plonking them on a stage devoid of context with no illumination but the harsh gaze of the quizzical reader, just how good translations can be. And I’m very pleased to report that the exercise is remarkably successful.” —Kit Maude, Akimbo Books, on Elemental
“Stone, earth, water, ice, wind, and burning heat. The stories here dig deep and unexpectedly into life’s fundamentals—the elements and the passions—bringing into English, many for the first time, writers of stature from across the globe. A celebration of both storytelling and translation, Elemental is essential, a gift that opens up the pleasures of new worlds.” —Hugh Raffles, author of The Book of Unconformities, on Elemental
“Marvelous…a credit to the art of both poets and translators.” —Cynthia Hogue, author of In June the Labyrinth and co-translator of Joan Darc, by Nathalie Quintane, on Home
“Unbelievably exciting…These are poems to read and reread, repeating the lines as though they were a secret between yourself and the page.” —The Paris Review, on Home
“The poems in this anthology abound with vivid imagery and moving remembrances of the past. They’re also a powerful demonstration of how, using only a handful of words, a poet can create an entire world—as Mohamad Nassereddine does in ‘The Mechanic’s Heresy.’ Observe: ‘When the mechanic in blue / stares up at the sky, / for a minute, he thinks himself God.’ Haunting and resonant throughout.” —Words Without Borders, on Home
“This remarkable anthology of Chinese speculative fiction offers seven tales of societal responsibility and individual freedom. . . . By turns cryptic and revealing, phantasmagorical and straightforward, these tales balance reality and fantasy on the edge of a knife.”—Publishers Weekly, starred review of That We May Live
“With enthralling and precise language, this first book in Two Lines Press’ Calico series of collected translated literature impresses…This collection of speculative Chinese fiction is compelling and provocative, exploring the thin line between reality and absurdity. ” —Booklist, starred review of That We May Live