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My Body is Paper: Stories and Poems
A newly discovered manuscript of unpublished work by one of the most important Chicanx voices of the last thirty years. "Without doubt one of the sexiest and most important writers I’ve ever read."—Justin Torres, author of Blackouts and We The Animals , from his foreword to My Body Is Paper Gil Cuadros was a groundbreaking gay Latinx writer whose work explored the intersections of sexuality, race, and spirituality. Diagnosed as HIV positive in 1987, he channeled his experiences into City of God , published by City Lights in 1994. Driven by the raw emotions of living with a life-threatening illness, his lyrical intensity and unflinching honesty shined a light on marginalized communities and familial expectations. In the thirty years since, City of God has gone on to become a classic of Chicanx literature. My Body is Paper is a recently discovered treasure, an unpublished body of work that is destined to capture the attention of an entirely new generation of readers. Although written more than a quarter century ago, these captivating stories and evocative poems leave an indelible mark, speaking to issues we grapple with today—sex, spirit, family, religion, culture of origin, and the betrayals of the body. Cuadros fearlessly sheds light on the indifference and cluelessness of the healthcare system toward people from marginalized the trauma of HIV/AIDS still reverberates for those afflicted with our most recent plague. Family and church may be the first experiences of love and community, but too often try to tamp us down, leaving a trail of profound mistrust. Sex can free us, and can wound us, and we may welcome both. Cuadros dives into these complexities with a resilient spirit, animating the everyday and the imagination, showing us that we too can survive these times—and beyond.
176 pages, Paperback
Published June 4, 2024
11 people are currently reading
201 people want to read
About the author
Gil Cuadros
3 books8 followersBorn Gilbert Daniel Cuadros in Los Angeles, CA in 1962, Gil Cuadros studied at East L.A. College and Pasadena Community College. His first literary influences were Genet's Quarelle and Our Lady of the Flowers, and later Tennessee Williams and William S. Boroughs.
"Gil Cuadros published stories and poems in Indivisible, High Risk 2, and Blood Whispers. His work is also on the compact disc, Verdict and the Violence: Poet's Response to the LA Uprising. He was awarded the 1991 Brody Literature Fellowship, and was one of the first recipients of the PEN Center USA/West grant to writers with HIV. He lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1996 at the age of 34.
In his short life, Cuadros published one book, City of God (City Lights Books, 1994), which is a collection of short stories and poems. It is a deeply affecting examination of ethnicity, sexuality and the ruthlessness of AIDS in 1990s California"
- La Bloga.blogspot.com
"Gil Cuadros published stories and poems in Indivisible, High Risk 2, and Blood Whispers. His work is also on the compact disc, Verdict and the Violence: Poet's Response to the LA Uprising. He was awarded the 1991 Brody Literature Fellowship, and was one of the first recipients of the PEN Center USA/West grant to writers with HIV. He lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1996 at the age of 34.
In his short life, Cuadros published one book, City of God (City Lights Books, 1994), which is a collection of short stories and poems. It is a deeply affecting examination of ethnicity, sexuality and the ruthlessness of AIDS in 1990s California"
- La Bloga.blogspot.com
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews
March 15, 2025
While I read this I just kept thinking how horrific this man’s death was from AIDS at 34 and how he had talent bursting out of his fingertips. My Body is Paper (the poem itself) is a true masterpiece. Can you imagine if this work had never gotten out into the world? There is a whole generation of people who had so much life to live who were just gone due to government neglect and fear mongering...
I’ll be thinking about this collection for a while. It’s a bit messy, with no real timeline, and it’s poetry, essays, stories, etc. But I was truly impressed with the writing.
Now I need to read his other book that was published while he was alive.
I’ll be thinking about this collection for a while. It’s a bit messy, with no real timeline, and it’s poetry, essays, stories, etc. But I was truly impressed with the writing.
Now I need to read his other book that was published while he was alive.
August 1, 2024
full of aliveness and evocative language, vivacity! cool proselike poems, expands what i think of as poetry, love the short little vignettes too, there is an understated feeling of formal experimentation happening here. and earthyness and love
August 4, 2024
ANOTHER MASTERPIECE OF GAY AND CHICANO LITERATURE
My Body Is Paper: Stories and Poems by Gil Cuadros is as unforgettable as his City of God, which was published thirty years ago, two years before his death in 1996.
My Body Is Paper contains twelve stories and thirty-two poems. Unlike City of God, which is arranged in two sections, one section of stories and one section of poems, My Body Is Paper contains seven sections, each of which may contain both stories and poems, or just poems, or just a story. Each section has a title which is a quotation from a story or a poem which appears in that section. Section II is titled “If she could, she would cut out / what is wrong with me; / my body is paper,” which is a line from the poem “If She Could.” Section VI is titled “I wonder who will love him after I am gone,” which is a line from “Heroes,” the beginning of an unfinished novel or novella. Section III’s title is “The jungle is lush and it cries,” which is the last line of the poem “Nectarines and Orchids.” This arrangement of the stories and poems in My Body Is Paper is much more effective than if the stories appeared in one section and the poems appeared in another section. Stories and poems with similar or related themes appear close together, instead of being scattered throughout the book, thus presenting a variety of approaches in prose and poetry to similar themes.
As in City of God, titles of stories and poems in My Body Is Paper reflect Gil Cuadros’s Catholic background: “Last Supper,” “Penance,” and “The Miraculous Catch of Fish.”
The story “Hands” is a perfect selection with which to begin My Body Is Paper. It introduces the narrator, based on Cuadros himself, I assume, and Marcus, his lover, both of whom prominently figure in many of the other stories and poems in the collection. Cuadros had a real-life lover named Marcus. This story also gives us a peek into the Chicano world in which they live. The narrator admits that he doesn’t speak Spanish very well. Barely five and a half pages in length, “Hands” is beautifully and tightly written. Packed is an apt word to describe this story. Every word is important. The prose contains no extraneous words. Once a week, the narrator, who says he doesn’t have long to live, goes to have lunch with Marcus, who works in a nursery across the street from a Catholic church. One day, while he is waiting for Marcus, the narrator meets a Mexican woman named Yolanda, who asks him to rake weeds from the flower bed around the statue of Mary “that stands in the corner of the parking lot, under a large, sturdy eucalyptus tree.” The hands of the statue of Mary had broken off during an earthquake. A bronze plaque says, “I have no hands, but yours.” As the narrator works with Yolanda in the earth, he “started to notice the meditative quality of working this soil . . . that I became more spirit than being.”
The ravages of AIDS are relentlessly described in the wrenching story titled “Heroes.” The myriad ways in which gay men relate to each other, love each other, and take care of each other are honestly and bravely described. “Heroes,” even if it is just an excerpt of what might have become a full-length novel, is a masterpiece. “Things Left,” the last story and the next to last piece in My Body Is Paper, absolutely blew me away. Cuadros’s descriptive talents are amazing in this story. Marcus, the narrator’s lover, has recently died: “Now I have . . . to get rid of unwanted clothes and condense our two dressers into one.” This three-and-one-half page story expresses irrecoverable loss and deep sorrow through descriptions of everyday physical objects.
Gil Cuadros’s poetry in My Body Is Paper is just as magnificent as his prose. As with Cuadros’s stories, the poems are heavily autobiographical. The reader experiences Gil Cuadros’s life as he is living it. I found the immediacy and intensity of the poems to be overwhelming at times.
Several of the poems describe the poet’s relationship with his parents. The title of the collection, My Body Is Paper, comes from the poem, “If She Could,” in which the poet says that his mother “would cut out / what is wrong with me; / my body is paper.” In the last stanza of “If She Could,” he writes, “I tell her it’s good that we argue, / scissors and paper, mother and son; / but she has to win with the last words. / She says, ‘It’s like you killed me.’” In “A Netless Heaven,” the poet’s mother is more upset about Magic Johnson, “her favorite player,” having HIV than her son being sick: “he’ll do a lot of good, he’ll beat this thing— / and like an unspooled movie I saw she didn’t cry / when I told her, face furrowed in disappointment, / said she knew I’d end like this.” I was absolutely stunned when I read these lines. In “Ardent Letters,” the poet says to his father, “Dear Dad, / I know you don’t love me.” He goes on to say, “Dad, I am the sissy-boy / you never wanted.” The poet also writes about his father in the poems “My Father’s Snoring Is Wild Tonight” and “Even My Father Put Down His Beer for This.”
As mentioned above, the stories and poems in My Body Is Paper are not arranged into separate sections as they are in City of God. They are intertwined with each other. Thus, a poem and a story with similar themes often appear next to each other. For example, “Black Helicopters,” a poem, is followed by the story “Surveillance.” “Black Helicopters” is as relevant today as it was when Cuadros wrote it over thirty years ago:
chop, chop, chop, they circled above.
Midwestern militia groups think the helicopters
are from some secret force of allied governments.
Others say it’s the FBI, CIA, or another dark intelligence.
I suspect a more plausible industrial conglomerate.
Dow, Philip Morris, Nabisco, whose sole purpose . . . ?
“Matthews hated fags” is the first line of “Surveillance.” Matthews is part of a cop detail monitoring the goings on in a park. Dorset, the Black cop, is dressed in cruising drag. Ginger operates the videotape recorders. They are a sinister, bloodthirsty bunch. By the end of the night, they’ve rounded up five “HIV criminals.” “Surveillance” is a chilling story.
I’ve read that Gil Cuadros’s City of God is taught in Chicano and queer studies courses. I hope that My Body Is Paper will be taught in courses, also. Cuadros’s brave and unflinching writings about the AIDS epidemic are essential contributions to the literature on AIDS
In his afterword to My Body Is Paper, Pablo Alvarez writes, “Some of the themes found throughout the collection, such as state betrayal and surveillance, accessible health care, and environmental racism, are as relevant today as they were when Cuadros was writing thirty years ago.” When you read Gil Cuadros, you are not reading dated writings from the past. Cuadros unforgettably speaks to the here and now.
I want to thank everyone who was involved in the publication of My Body Is Paper. What a labor of love it must have been! I want to thank City Lights Books for keeping City of God in print for thirty years. Now, with the publication of My Body Is Paper, both books should be in print for a long, long time.
Gil Cuadros was lost to AIDS on August 29, 1996, at the age of 34.
My Body Is Paper: Stories and Poems by Gil Cuadros is as unforgettable as his City of God, which was published thirty years ago, two years before his death in 1996.
My Body Is Paper contains twelve stories and thirty-two poems. Unlike City of God, which is arranged in two sections, one section of stories and one section of poems, My Body Is Paper contains seven sections, each of which may contain both stories and poems, or just poems, or just a story. Each section has a title which is a quotation from a story or a poem which appears in that section. Section II is titled “If she could, she would cut out / what is wrong with me; / my body is paper,” which is a line from the poem “If She Could.” Section VI is titled “I wonder who will love him after I am gone,” which is a line from “Heroes,” the beginning of an unfinished novel or novella. Section III’s title is “The jungle is lush and it cries,” which is the last line of the poem “Nectarines and Orchids.” This arrangement of the stories and poems in My Body Is Paper is much more effective than if the stories appeared in one section and the poems appeared in another section. Stories and poems with similar or related themes appear close together, instead of being scattered throughout the book, thus presenting a variety of approaches in prose and poetry to similar themes.
As in City of God, titles of stories and poems in My Body Is Paper reflect Gil Cuadros’s Catholic background: “Last Supper,” “Penance,” and “The Miraculous Catch of Fish.”
The story “Hands” is a perfect selection with which to begin My Body Is Paper. It introduces the narrator, based on Cuadros himself, I assume, and Marcus, his lover, both of whom prominently figure in many of the other stories and poems in the collection. Cuadros had a real-life lover named Marcus. This story also gives us a peek into the Chicano world in which they live. The narrator admits that he doesn’t speak Spanish very well. Barely five and a half pages in length, “Hands” is beautifully and tightly written. Packed is an apt word to describe this story. Every word is important. The prose contains no extraneous words. Once a week, the narrator, who says he doesn’t have long to live, goes to have lunch with Marcus, who works in a nursery across the street from a Catholic church. One day, while he is waiting for Marcus, the narrator meets a Mexican woman named Yolanda, who asks him to rake weeds from the flower bed around the statue of Mary “that stands in the corner of the parking lot, under a large, sturdy eucalyptus tree.” The hands of the statue of Mary had broken off during an earthquake. A bronze plaque says, “I have no hands, but yours.” As the narrator works with Yolanda in the earth, he “started to notice the meditative quality of working this soil . . . that I became more spirit than being.”
The ravages of AIDS are relentlessly described in the wrenching story titled “Heroes.” The myriad ways in which gay men relate to each other, love each other, and take care of each other are honestly and bravely described. “Heroes,” even if it is just an excerpt of what might have become a full-length novel, is a masterpiece. “Things Left,” the last story and the next to last piece in My Body Is Paper, absolutely blew me away. Cuadros’s descriptive talents are amazing in this story. Marcus, the narrator’s lover, has recently died: “Now I have . . . to get rid of unwanted clothes and condense our two dressers into one.” This three-and-one-half page story expresses irrecoverable loss and deep sorrow through descriptions of everyday physical objects.
Gil Cuadros’s poetry in My Body Is Paper is just as magnificent as his prose. As with Cuadros’s stories, the poems are heavily autobiographical. The reader experiences Gil Cuadros’s life as he is living it. I found the immediacy and intensity of the poems to be overwhelming at times.
Several of the poems describe the poet’s relationship with his parents. The title of the collection, My Body Is Paper, comes from the poem, “If She Could,” in which the poet says that his mother “would cut out / what is wrong with me; / my body is paper.” In the last stanza of “If She Could,” he writes, “I tell her it’s good that we argue, / scissors and paper, mother and son; / but she has to win with the last words. / She says, ‘It’s like you killed me.’” In “A Netless Heaven,” the poet’s mother is more upset about Magic Johnson, “her favorite player,” having HIV than her son being sick: “he’ll do a lot of good, he’ll beat this thing— / and like an unspooled movie I saw she didn’t cry / when I told her, face furrowed in disappointment, / said she knew I’d end like this.” I was absolutely stunned when I read these lines. In “Ardent Letters,” the poet says to his father, “Dear Dad, / I know you don’t love me.” He goes on to say, “Dad, I am the sissy-boy / you never wanted.” The poet also writes about his father in the poems “My Father’s Snoring Is Wild Tonight” and “Even My Father Put Down His Beer for This.”
As mentioned above, the stories and poems in My Body Is Paper are not arranged into separate sections as they are in City of God. They are intertwined with each other. Thus, a poem and a story with similar themes often appear next to each other. For example, “Black Helicopters,” a poem, is followed by the story “Surveillance.” “Black Helicopters” is as relevant today as it was when Cuadros wrote it over thirty years ago:
chop, chop, chop, they circled above.
Midwestern militia groups think the helicopters
are from some secret force of allied governments.
Others say it’s the FBI, CIA, or another dark intelligence.
I suspect a more plausible industrial conglomerate.
Dow, Philip Morris, Nabisco, whose sole purpose . . . ?
“Matthews hated fags” is the first line of “Surveillance.” Matthews is part of a cop detail monitoring the goings on in a park. Dorset, the Black cop, is dressed in cruising drag. Ginger operates the videotape recorders. They are a sinister, bloodthirsty bunch. By the end of the night, they’ve rounded up five “HIV criminals.” “Surveillance” is a chilling story.
I’ve read that Gil Cuadros’s City of God is taught in Chicano and queer studies courses. I hope that My Body Is Paper will be taught in courses, also. Cuadros’s brave and unflinching writings about the AIDS epidemic are essential contributions to the literature on AIDS
In his afterword to My Body Is Paper, Pablo Alvarez writes, “Some of the themes found throughout the collection, such as state betrayal and surveillance, accessible health care, and environmental racism, are as relevant today as they were when Cuadros was writing thirty years ago.” When you read Gil Cuadros, you are not reading dated writings from the past. Cuadros unforgettably speaks to the here and now.
I want to thank everyone who was involved in the publication of My Body Is Paper. What a labor of love it must have been! I want to thank City Lights Books for keeping City of God in print for thirty years. Now, with the publication of My Body Is Paper, both books should be in print for a long, long time.
Gil Cuadros was lost to AIDS on August 29, 1996, at the age of 34.
July 29, 2025
What words can I use, Gil? What can I say about the bravery with which you wrote? What can I say about the pain you observed in the dark and brought back with you?
Those skeletons, those runes, those pieces begging to be whole under the eye of a reader decades away. Thank you Gil, thank you to everybody involved in publishing this book. And thank you, Nayla, for seeing me in Gil, and introducing me to him.
Those skeletons, those runes, those pieces begging to be whole under the eye of a reader decades away. Thank you Gil, thank you to everybody involved in publishing this book. And thank you, Nayla, for seeing me in Gil, and introducing me to him.
January 12, 2025
“The title, MY BODY IS PAPER, is taken from the opening stanza of the poem ‘If She Could.’ The speaker is talking about his mother who, like a pair of scissors, would cut out the faggy parts, as well as the illness, from her son’s paper body. Beyond that sense of paper, of course, there is the literary sense of a corpus, a body of work. Also, the sense of deterioration, the paper-thin skin of the very ill. The body made paper reminds me, too, of the parchment of holy books, animal skins scraped, burnished, and stitched together—and because I come from a long line of Catholics, I think of the paper-thin communion wafer, the consumable body, forever ingesting and forever reproducible. That is, when I read MY BODY IS PAPER, I am reminded of the concept of mystical recurrence. Take this paper and read it, this is his body, broken for us. Do this in remembrance of Gil.” Justin Torres, Foreward
August 18, 2024
such a good (gay) book. visceral and bitter, I can feel the author’s anguish dripping from the pages. it’s not always easy to empathize with someone in a book, but I could feel every word resonate in my bones
February 4, 2026
i bought this in a beautiful bookstore in san francisco with kaden. this is a breathtaking collection of stories and poems that fits into my frequented category of..ah yes...depressing queer literature.
sections-analysis-but-dnf
September 26, 2024Read "Eric", "Hands" and "Need."
Includes: mommy issues, queer yearning, living with HIV AIDS, religious turmoil
Includes: mommy issues, queer yearning, living with HIV AIDS, religious turmoil
March 3, 2025
I don’t know what I’ll do when faced with death. I hope I can face it as strongly as this writer.
I don’t think I’ll be forgetting this collection any time soon.
I don’t think I’ll be forgetting this collection any time soon.
June 23, 2025
"The jungle is lush and it cries"
Displaying 1 - 10 of 10 reviews