The University of Arizona Press
Date: Wednesday, January 24, 2024
Time: 6:30 – 8:00 p.m., PST
Where: Museum of the African Diaspora, 685 Mission St, San Francisco
Alan Pelaez Lopez and contributors launch When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent at MOAD in San Francisco. Cartoonist Breena Nuñez and poet-theorist Franchesca Araújo join editor Pelaez Lopez in a discussion to celebrate the publication of this important book. The free event is open to the public.
About the book:
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?
