Brown Neon
Raquel Gutiérrez
(Author)
Description
A meditation on southwestern terrains, intergenerational queer dynamics, and surveilled brown artists that crosses physical and conceptual borders. Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiéeacute;rrez's debut essay collection, Brown Neon, gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships. For Gutiérrez, terrain is essential to understanding that no story, no matter how personal, is separate from the space where it unfolds. Whether contemplating the value of adobe as both vernacular architecture and commodified art object, highlighting the feminist wounding and transphobic apparitions haunting the multigenerational lesbian social fabric, or recalling a failed romance, Gutiérrez traverses complex questions of gender, class, identity, and citizenship with curiosity and nuance.
Product Details
Price
$16.95
$15.76
Publisher
Coffee House Press
Publish Date
June 07, 2022
Pages
200
Dimensions
4.9 X 7.7 X 0.7 inches | 0.5 pounds
Language
English
Type
Paperback
EAN/UPC
9781566896375
BISAC Categories:
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About the Author
Raquel Gutiérrez is an arts critic, writer, poet, and educator. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Gutiérrez credits the queer and feminist diy, post-punk zine culture of the 1990s, plus Los Angeles County and Getty paid arts internships, for introducing her/them to the various vibrant art and music scenes and communities throughout Southern California. Gutiérrez is a 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism and a 2017 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She is/They are faculty for Oregon State University-Cascades' Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Gutiérrez calls Tucson, Arizona, home.
Reviews
Winner of the 2023 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian Nonfiction
Finalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/Biography
Vogue, "12 New Queer Books to Read This Summer"
The Millions, "Most Anticipated"
Oprah Daily, "Must-Read Books by Latinx Authors"
TODAY, "18 Most Anticipated Latino Books of 2022"
SPIN, "Favorite Titles of 2022"
Electric Literature, "Most Anticipated LGBTQ Books of 2022"
Hyperallergic, "Best Art Books of 2022"
Ms. Magazine, "Favorite Books of 2022"
Latinx in Publishing, "Most Anticipated 2022 Latinx Books"
Bustle, "Most Anticipated Books of 2022"
Latino Stories, "Best New Latinx Authors of 2022"
"In these essays by a poet, arts writer, and self-identified 'queer brown butch, ' encounters in Los Angeles and the Southwest with aging punks, border activists, lesbian legends, and others give rise to explorations of Latinx identity, cultural resistance, and the role of art. . . . The landscape cannot be separated from its history of violence, and there is no desert vista 'that doesn't have the uncanny attached to it.'" -The New Yorker "Singular and inimitable . . . focusing much of the collection on the physical land that has alternately sustained, commodified, and criminalized so many modes of being." --Emma Specter, Vogue "An essay can't listen, but these come close, leaving room for questions left unanswered and realities left unlived. . . . Ambitious in scope and narrative structure, perhaps most impressive is the way in which [Gutiéeacute;rrez] conquers such disparate terrain . . . to reveal how much connection we all share. There is no way to separate the political from the personal, no wall that could keep us from bleeding into one another. By blurring these lines, Gutiérrez invites us to consider how walls and borders are illusory, arbitrary, and restrictive. Freedom, alternatively, is something in motion." --Rachel Leóoacute;n, Los Angeles Review of Books "Ferrets out the subterranean forces that fuel relationships with ourselves, with others, and with the land that marks our identity. Whether it is creating a cartography of queerness through family lineage and propinquity or digging through the layers of sorrow, love, and trauma to uncover the true borders and frontiers of our identity, each essay offers a unique consciousness at work." --Ernesto Mestre-Reed, Oprah Daily
"In shapeshifting ekphrastic essays about collisions of fascism with aesthetics, Raquel Gutiérrez maps their own queer Latinx identity with intergenerational historicity, equal parts punk and poetic. A versatile political thinker whose twin backgrounds in arts criticism and zinesterism inform this blazing collection of prose, Gutiérrez shines bright light on the brutal injustice of borders, and elucidates the uncanny violence inherent to desert land art. . . . Dazzling." --Sadie Dupuis, SPIN
"Poet Gutiérrez meditates on geography, gender, creativity, and love in her lyrical debut collection. . . . Written with energy, critical acumen, and ra
