When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent

by Alan Pelaez Lopez (Editor)

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 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.

Genres: Poetry, Nonfiction

320 pages, Paperback

Published December 12, 2023

About the author

Alan Pelaez Lopez is a poet, and installation and adornment artist from Oaxaca, Mexico, and an assistant professor at the University of California, Davis. Their debut visual poetry collection, "Intergalactic Travels: poems from a fugitive alien" (The Operating System, 2020), was a finalist for the 2020 International Latino Book Award. They are also the author of the chapbook "to love and mourn in the age of displacement" (Nomadic Press, 2020), and the editor of "When Language Broke Open: An Anthology of Queer and Trans Black Writers of Latin American Descent" (University of Arizona Press, 2023).

Reviews

[Scott · Rating 5 out of 5]

A powerfully moving collection of poetry sprinkled with prose and an illustrated memoir. Organized around the themes of Memory, Care, and Futures, the texts in this volume wrestle with grief, loss, belonging, ancestors, dreams, and more. The offerings hit hard and create capacious grounds for reflection, mourning, healing, conspiring, reclaiming, and building.

As editor Alan Pelaez Lopez writes in their excellent introduction, "In a way, this anthology breaks epistemological frameworks of race, gender, sex, sexuality, nationality, and heritage....'When Language Broke Open' makes room for us (Black queer and trans* writers of Latin American descent) to be multidimensional beings who inherited and must work with, against, in suspicion of, and through the imagined communities of 'Latinidad' and 'LGBTQIA+ unity.'"

From the opening poem to the coda, this volume does just that. Highly recommended.

[Allyssa · Rating 5 out of 5]

This is a powerful collection. I really enjoyed delving into the works/words of each creator, with a special shout-out to the Memory section of the book, through which many of the poems and stories brought tears to my eyes.

[Irene · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow I wonder what incredibly sexy trans Afro latinx poet wrote the poem that inspired the title of this book

[sara · Rating 5 out of 5]

sometimes i read a book that makes me so immensely glad i'm both latino and queer and this is 1000% one of those books. WOW. queer latine folks are so unbelievably full of creativity!!!!!

[Becky · Rating 5 out of 5]

I loved this anthology from concept to execution, really smart and beautiful.