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Algarabía: The Song of Cenex, Natural Son of the Isle Alarabíyya / La canción de Cenex, hijo natural de la Ínsula Alarabíyya
A Puerto Rican trans epic that blends poetic play and speculative fiction, by a Lambda Literary Award winner
Algarabía follows Cenex, a trans being who narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf. An inhabitant of a colony of Earth in a parallel universe, Cenex leads us through his years as an experimental subject, a stay in suburbia, and not-so-far-off lands as he struggles to find a name, a body, and a stable home. His song clashes variegated sources with work by cis writers on trans figures, referencing everything from Clueless to Taino cosmology within a single line.
Algarabía inscribes an origin narrative for trans people in the face of their erasure from colonial and anti-colonial literary canons, laughing at its own survival with sharp, unserious rage.
Una epopeya puertorriqueña trans que mezcla poesía y narrativa especulativa, por un ganador del Premio Lambda
Algarabía sigue a Cenex, un ser trans que narra su vida retrospectivamente mientras navega por las historias contadas en su nombre. Habitante de una colonia de la Tierra en un universo paralelo, Cenex nos conduce a través de sus años como sujeto experimental, una estancia suburbana, unas tierras no tan lejanas y su lucha por encontrar un cuerpo y un hogar estables. Su canto enfrenta textos de escritores cis sobre figuras trans con una variedad de fuentes, haciendo referencia a Clueless y a la cosmología taína dentro de un mismo verso.
Algarabía inscribe un mito fundacional para las personas trans frente a su exclusión de los cánones literarios coloniales y anticoloniales y se ríe de su propia supervivencia con una rabia pícara y aguda.
Algarabía follows Cenex, a trans being who narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf. An inhabitant of a colony of Earth in a parallel universe, Cenex leads us through his years as an experimental subject, a stay in suburbia, and not-so-far-off lands as he struggles to find a name, a body, and a stable home. His song clashes variegated sources with work by cis writers on trans figures, referencing everything from Clueless to Taino cosmology within a single line.
Algarabía inscribes an origin narrative for trans people in the face of their erasure from colonial and anti-colonial literary canons, laughing at its own survival with sharp, unserious rage.
Una epopeya puertorriqueña trans que mezcla poesía y narrativa especulativa, por un ganador del Premio Lambda
Algarabía sigue a Cenex, un ser trans que narra su vida retrospectivamente mientras navega por las historias contadas en su nombre. Habitante de una colonia de la Tierra en un universo paralelo, Cenex nos conduce a través de sus años como sujeto experimental, una estancia suburbana, unas tierras no tan lejanas y su lucha por encontrar un cuerpo y un hogar estables. Su canto enfrenta textos de escritores cis sobre figuras trans con una variedad de fuentes, haciendo referencia a Clueless y a la cosmología taína dentro de un mismo verso.
Algarabía inscribe un mito fundacional para las personas trans frente a su exclusión de los cánones literarios coloniales y anticoloniales y se ríe de su propia supervivencia con una rabia pícara y aguda.
448 pages, Paperback
Published September 2, 2025
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112 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews
August 19, 2025
la primera epica trans de peerre!!!
amo todo de este libro: la colonia en un universe alterno, cenex, criatura trans que nos guia por algarabia, la forma, el juego de palabras, las ilustraciones, la lucha por sobrevivir la colonia, la transfobia y encontrar familia escogida para seguir luchando. amo un millon
amo todo de este libro: la colonia en un universe alterno, cenex, criatura trans que nos guia por algarabia, la forma, el juego de palabras, las ilustraciones, la lucha por sobrevivir la colonia, la transfobia y encontrar familia escogida para seguir luchando. amo un millon
June 15, 2025
Thank you to Graywolf Press for the ARC!
Thoroughly enjoyed! Trans joy and queer love and poetry as a political statement ❤️
Thoroughly enjoyed! Trans joy and queer love and poetry as a political statement ❤️
February 1, 2026
"Antes muerta que sencilla."
In all transparency, I am writing this review after only one read (and trust me, this story is deserving of multiple). I also am not Puerto Rican, and I am not a Spanish speaker. I know enough Spanish to understand basic sentence structure (not that helpful in this case) and enough to get by when I visit Spanish speaking countries. Lastly, lucky as I am to belong to the queer community, I am not trans.
With my own starting point roughly established, what a phenomenal experience it was to read this epic. Throughout the story I snorted, read through teary eyes, and furiously translated some of the Spanish phrases. I still didn't know what exactly was going on half the time, but I was fully along for the ride.
"I know myself alone because there are alones, out in the open, and inside safeless containers, hospitals, habitats of law."
Now that I'm thinking about it, this is the only modern epic I think I have read. The format and prose utilized was just complex enough that I was mildly confused at certain points, but never enough to be drawn out of the story (this feeling was validated on pg 103). If anything, the complicated narrative points drew me in more. Salas Rivera has an amazing ability to weave together those more abstract concepts with intimately relatable experiences. I really wish I could add all the quotes I underlined or hearted or wrote giant exclamation points by to this post, but that might end up a little excessive. There were three points in this book that I added a tab to because they invoked something in me a little more than the surrounding parts.
The first was when Cenex first meets the boycycle.
"... I felt hewed
by his short-lived confirmation that I was not,
as I had suspected for weeks, someone
I had made up to pass the time."
Holy shit. As someone who has immensely struggled with a proper sense of self and battling that horrendous war between acting as someone being perceived vs just acting as who I am, those few lines made me pause for a few minutes. Now again, I just finished this book maybe an hour ago, so I haven't fully reflected on my notes in the book. But. BUT- I will be using that as a journal prompt. The point that it was someone else that confirmed for Cenex that he was in fact real (instead of his own self validation) and the potential thought that Cenex had worried for weeks that he, himself, may not be fully real, but just a creation or figment of his own imagination to pass the time was *chef's kiss* (holy run-on sentences forgive me).
The next was in Canto III.
"Do you remember your birth?
No, but I wanted no record of those first hours.
I carried my birth in my meat"
Damn. My literal note in the book is "holy shit" scribbled right next to those two bottom lines. Carrying the trauma of physically being born, the trauma of your parent's bodies already inlaid within you, is such a monumental concept to contemplate.
Alrighty, the last one that got a tab from me is below the (in my mind flashing) sign that says 'HOMOPHOBIA KILLS' in Canto IV.
"There was a //verse where I was austistic,
self-inducing overstimulation, teasing
my limits, and dissociating for a high,
a god roller-skating on my temple."
Just for clarity's sake, my note written next to that in my book is "oh my fucking god". I am someone who is constantly listening to music, not just because I truly love music, but it's also an attempt to subdue those pesky background thoughts and distractions. Even as I write this review in my hotel room, my trusty Lofi Girl is playing on my TV. I have consciously acknowledged that I listen to music to help my overstimulation and overthinking for more than a decade now. Yet it's the teasing of my limits and the potential dissociating for the high of it that really makes me want to sit more with my attempts at self-soothing. Another one for the journal, I guess.
Now before this gets too long, I will wrap up with something that Salas Rivera says in his Note on Nomenclature and Style. "After all, it engages with misunderstanding just as much as it engages with identity formation and transformation." I adore that this is explicitly stated. Everyone's interaction with this story is going to be so different. There are going to be references that someone else understands that I won't, and vice versa. With stories like these (and how ridiculously well written this was), it's so beautiful to find those small pieces of text that kind of shock you into comradery. I find it so impressive how people can romanticize the so-thought ordinary. Like "a model tsunami at the bottom of a fishing boat" or "fan wind against a corrugated mouth roof". It was oddly centering and mind-boundary-pushing for me to read.
Alright I'm rambling again. I'm so glad I read this book. Thank you to Vico and the Thirsty Silly Goosin' Queer Book Club for turning me on to this. I can't wait to hear everyone's own experiences with this story. I can't wait to read more by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, thank you for writing such a beautiful story.
In all transparency, I am writing this review after only one read (and trust me, this story is deserving of multiple). I also am not Puerto Rican, and I am not a Spanish speaker. I know enough Spanish to understand basic sentence structure (not that helpful in this case) and enough to get by when I visit Spanish speaking countries. Lastly, lucky as I am to belong to the queer community, I am not trans.
With my own starting point roughly established, what a phenomenal experience it was to read this epic. Throughout the story I snorted, read through teary eyes, and furiously translated some of the Spanish phrases. I still didn't know what exactly was going on half the time, but I was fully along for the ride.
"I know myself alone because there are alones, out in the open, and inside safeless containers, hospitals, habitats of law."
Now that I'm thinking about it, this is the only modern epic I think I have read. The format and prose utilized was just complex enough that I was mildly confused at certain points, but never enough to be drawn out of the story (this feeling was validated on pg 103). If anything, the complicated narrative points drew me in more. Salas Rivera has an amazing ability to weave together those more abstract concepts with intimately relatable experiences. I really wish I could add all the quotes I underlined or hearted or wrote giant exclamation points by to this post, but that might end up a little excessive. There were three points in this book that I added a tab to because they invoked something in me a little more than the surrounding parts.
The first was when Cenex first meets the boycycle.
"... I felt hewed
by his short-lived confirmation that I was not,
as I had suspected for weeks, someone
I had made up to pass the time."
Holy shit. As someone who has immensely struggled with a proper sense of self and battling that horrendous war between acting as someone being perceived vs just acting as who I am, those few lines made me pause for a few minutes. Now again, I just finished this book maybe an hour ago, so I haven't fully reflected on my notes in the book. But. BUT- I will be using that as a journal prompt. The point that it was someone else that confirmed for Cenex that he was in fact real (instead of his own self validation) and the potential thought that Cenex had worried for weeks that he, himself, may not be fully real, but just a creation or figment of his own imagination to pass the time was *chef's kiss* (holy run-on sentences forgive me).
The next was in Canto III.
"Do you remember your birth?
No, but I wanted no record of those first hours.
I carried my birth in my meat"
Damn. My literal note in the book is "holy shit" scribbled right next to those two bottom lines. Carrying the trauma of physically being born, the trauma of your parent's bodies already inlaid within you, is such a monumental concept to contemplate.
Alrighty, the last one that got a tab from me is below the (in my mind flashing) sign that says 'HOMOPHOBIA KILLS' in Canto IV.
"There was a //verse where I was austistic,
self-inducing overstimulation, teasing
my limits, and dissociating for a high,
a god roller-skating on my temple."
Just for clarity's sake, my note written next to that in my book is "oh my fucking god". I am someone who is constantly listening to music, not just because I truly love music, but it's also an attempt to subdue those pesky background thoughts and distractions. Even as I write this review in my hotel room, my trusty Lofi Girl is playing on my TV. I have consciously acknowledged that I listen to music to help my overstimulation and overthinking for more than a decade now. Yet it's the teasing of my limits and the potential dissociating for the high of it that really makes me want to sit more with my attempts at self-soothing. Another one for the journal, I guess.
Now before this gets too long, I will wrap up with something that Salas Rivera says in his Note on Nomenclature and Style. "After all, it engages with misunderstanding just as much as it engages with identity formation and transformation." I adore that this is explicitly stated. Everyone's interaction with this story is going to be so different. There are going to be references that someone else understands that I won't, and vice versa. With stories like these (and how ridiculously well written this was), it's so beautiful to find those small pieces of text that kind of shock you into comradery. I find it so impressive how people can romanticize the so-thought ordinary. Like "a model tsunami at the bottom of a fishing boat" or "fan wind against a corrugated mouth roof". It was oddly centering and mind-boundary-pushing for me to read.
Alright I'm rambling again. I'm so glad I read this book. Thank you to Vico and the Thirsty Silly Goosin' Queer Book Club for turning me on to this. I can't wait to hear everyone's own experiences with this story. I can't wait to read more by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera, thank you for writing such a beautiful story.
December 26, 2025
Mi reseña del libro aquí: https://www.full-stop.net/2025/12/26/...
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 reviews