The Adventures of China Iron

by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, Iona Macintyre (Translator), Fiona Macintosh (Translator)

I took off my dress and the petticoats and I put on the Englishman’s breeches and shirt. I put on his neckerchief and asked Liz to take the scissors and cut my hair short. My plait fell to the ground and there I was, a young lad. Good boy she said to me, then pulled my face towards her and kissed me on the mouth. It surprised me, I didn’t understand, I didn’t know you could do that and it was revealed to me so naturally: why wouldn’t you be able to do that? Liz’s imperious tongue entered my mouth, her spicy, flowery saliva tasted like curry and tea and lavender water.

1872. The pampas of Argentina. China is a young woman eking out an existence in a remote gaucho encampment. After her no-good husband is conscripted into the army, China bolts for freedom, setting off on a wagon journey through the pampas in the company of her new-found friend Liz, a settler from Scotland. While Liz provides China with a sentimental education and schools her in the nefarious ways of the British Empire, their eyes are opened to the wonders of Argentina’s richly diverse flora and fauna, cultures and languages, as well as to the ruthless violence involved in nation-building.

This subversive retelling of Argentina’s foundational gaucho epic Martín Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths.

Genres: Fiction, Historical Fiction, LGBT, Queer, Spanish Literature, Historical, Lesbian

175 pages, ebook

First published January 1, 2017

About the author

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara (San Isidro, 4 de noviembre de 1968) es una escritora y periodista argentina.​ Es considerada una de las figuras más prominentes de la literatura latinoamericana contemporánea, además de ser una destacada intelectual y activista feminista y socioambientalista.

Reviews

[Adina ( back from Vacay…slowly recovering) · Rating 3 out of 5]

Shortlisted for International Booker prize 2020

The Adventures of China Iron is the 2nd novel I’ve read published by the wonderful Charco Press (check more about it here).

It took me a while to write a review because I had no inspiration (still don’t) and it was collaborated with an indecision about my opinion of this Pampas erotica.

The novel is loosely based on an epic poem from 1872, called Martin Fierro by José Hernández. China Iron is the wife of the gaucho Martin Fierro (Fierro=Iron in Spanish) but it only appears briefly in the poem whereas the novel makes her its hero. China, married off when still a girl, enjoys being left alone by her husband who is called to arms and jumps at the opportunity to abandon her sons and embark in an adventure with Liz. Liz is a Scottish young woman who decides to ride North through the pampas in order to find her husband. The first part is and ode to nature, The Pampas and its beauty, and the gaucho way of live. The 2nd part gets way more heated, like the scorching sun of the plains. We are treated with the sexual awakening of China, who gets down to business with Liz. In the end, the two women reach Indian Territory where they both find their husbands. Fierro is a changed man, gone a bit crazy after the loss of his lover. The Indians are portrayed as an idealistic society, in communion with the nature and enjoying sexual freedom (think orgies). What better place to live?

I was a bit moved by the beautiful description of nature and the Gaucho dying way of life. The 2nd part did nothing to me and the characters left me cold as well. The short chapter made it easy for me to abandon the book and go read something else. I could not develop a relationship with the novel because of its structure.

I have to admit that I thought about steaks the whole time I read this novel, I even went and bought some beef because I could not take it anymore, the urge was to strong. I don’t know what it says about me that I read about orgies and thought of meat.

I understand why it was shortlisted but I would have preferred The Eight Life (still reading) instead of this one.

[Paromjit · Rating 4 out of 5]

A wonderfully fun and entertaining read.

[inciminci · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Yes, freedom is the best air, my darling."

To leave everything behind, to start a journey, sit in a vehicle and just look at landscapes, let the impressions cleanse you of your worries, responsibilities, your routines is as exciting as it is cathartic. The road adventures of China Iron take place in the Argentina of the late 19th century, a time in which a voyage poses greater dangers and risks than in our time, but leads through an extremely rewarding place. For the most part, at least. On their wagon, China and her companions the Scottish wife Liz, gaucho Rosario and the dog Estreya will pass through the pampas, witness the pitiful existence of gauchos in an estancia and the detestable colonial order, and finally find and join the indigenous Iñchiñ people.

Martín Fierro is a real life epic poem about the gaucho life, and China Iron is an interpretation, a re-telling of the story surrounding this epic poem, adding and putting in focus a queer quality; Liz and China learn from each other about their respective worlds and learn how to love each other, learn what they are and what they want to be.

Matching its pace to the ox-drawn wagon, The Adventures of China Iron takes its time, inviting us slowly slowly, comfortably rocking and swaying into historical Argentina's impressive landscape, and before we know it, we're completely captivated by this vast and rich, yet at the same time miserable and cruel place. The slow introduction, together with a feeling of detachment from both heroines, would be the only points I consider flaws, everything else was quite fascinating.

[Antonomasia]

Like a short Sarah Waters novel set on the Argentinian pampas. It's also a contemporary feminist/queer response to Argentina's national epic poem Martín Fierro (Part 1, 1872; Part 2, 1879). Reading Fierro enables you to spot references in China Iron and understand more about why some scenes are significant. But China Iron also works in its own right as a 19th-century lesbian/queer adventure, romance and coming-of-age story - and critique of the historical and modern socio-political order.

Narrator China (Latin Spanish for girl/lass) - soon renamed Josephine Star Iron - is the teenage wife of the eponymous Martín Fierro, left behind when her husband was press-ganged into the army (part of a process of clearance of rural gaucho communities by the Argentinian authorities of the time). Some details in China Iron don't match up with the poem Martín Fierro; this is partly explained when China says her husband was a liar. (For example, in the original poem there's no reason to believe that Fierro won his wife in a card game, nor that she, generally referred to as a woman, mujer, was only 14 years old; their sons are also several years older.) At the beginning of Cabezón Cámara's novel, China decides to hit the road with her dog Estreya (Star), leaving her two babies in the care of a trustworthy old couple.

She soon bands together with - and develops a crush on - Liz, just arrived from Scotland, who is travelling to claim some land that she and her husband are to manage for a wealthy British investor. In time-honoured literary (and no doubt real life) tradition, China has her hair lopped off and dons men's clothes to travel more safely and avoid being recognised, and becomes Jo. (The great advantage of a historical setting for this sort of thing is that characters do not have to define themselves according to, or match up exactly to, contemporary terms for gender and sexuality: they simply feel, say and act.)

Jo's narrative in Part I (of III) is suffused with a childlike sense of wonder at the beautiful and brutal sights of nature on the pampas, and the information about the wider world, colonialism and trade, which she learns from Liz. Liz is the daughter of an artist-farmer (Robert Burns was a poet-farmer, so why not?), which perhaps renders more plausible her level of education relative to her class in the 1870s. Cabezón Cámara - via translators Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre - is very skilful in relating Liz's tales of the British Empire and its exploits and abuses. One can see that the author is critical of imperialism, and that Jo has little love for it, whilst also being aware that Liz, despite a few reservations, is a woman of her time, prepared to use colonialism to further her and her relatives' quality of life, that she takes pride in many British achievements, and sees some of the more unsavoury aspects of empire as a necessary evil.

The intertextuality ramps up in Part II when the travellers (now including a stray young gay gaucho, Rosarió) arrive at a fort where Liz is to meet with a general on her employer's behalf. This turns out to be none other than José Hernández, a fictionalised version of the author of Martín Fierro. This General Hernández, when he's not passed-out drunk, loves to bloviate about his ideas to improve and modernise Argentina with railways, industrialisation, civilising the populace (especially gauchos), and similar Victorian projects, and is a drooling fan of the British Empire and its representatives. My knowledge of the real José Hernández is limited to the introductions of two editions of Martín Fierro and a Wikipedia page, but it sounds like there are at least a few clear differences between real Hernández and China Iron's General Hernández; real Hernández was opposed to political centralisation, for one thing. I don't know whether there is a credible theory that Hernández appropriated any of the Fierro text from real gaucho poets. But making this part of fictional General Hernández's story allows him to be the novel's emblem of male European hegemony and the wrongs it wrought on disadvantaged people.

Liz does her best to play up to the General - and to a political archetype of the white middle-class woman assisting her menfolk in the repression of the working classes and people of colour. Jo is hungry with lust for Liz, regardless of her being a somewhat ambiguous figure in these scenes, and wants to enjoy their time together as much as possible before Liz's husband is back on the scene. Amid the luxurious surroundings of the fort, they have several erotic encounters. Both are enthusiastically consenting, but, as Jo is still only 15, some readers from countries with older ages of consent may have reservations.

Further unsympathetic aspects of General Hernández's schemes emerge. He explains that in his poem, he deliberately made the Indians sound crueller than they were, because Argentina needed their lands and because the gauchos needed an enemy to unite against. (An enemy that wasn't the authorities, is the unspoken point.) The most graphic brutalities in this novel are between gauchos and the authorities trying to tame them - such as, some years before Liz and Jo's arrival, the gang rape of a white teacher from the USA and her authorised torture of the perpetrators. Life for underlings at the fort is regimented, with its teams of tamed gauchos who do work that they would have once considered beneath them, in a de-skilled, production-line setup, and who, on command, recite a version of the didactic last stanza of Martín Fierro II. This rigid, almost Taylorist, life holds little appeal for Liz, Jo and Rosarió, who are keen to strike out for Liz's claim, regardless of the General's warnings about it being on Indian territory. The freedom of pioneer life is the side of 19th century imperialism that appeals to them. Their parting shot is to stealthily start a drunken orgy among the entire populace of the fort, disrupting (queering?) the General's rules for strict monogamy among the gauchos and chinas. (Traditional gaucho communities were known, rather like Victorian London's rookeries, for a licentiousness where sexual freedom blurred with abuse and criminality, to use later categories.)

The friends' first meeting with an Indian band is almost a mirror-image of the scenes in Fierro 2 where Martín and his companion Cruz want to go and live with the Indians. Where the Indians in the 1879 poem were largely hostile, and understandably suspicious given the violence they often experienced from European settlers, those in Cabezón Cámara's book are curious, friendly, and, in at least one case, sexually attracted to the travellers.

There follows a series of scenes which are part 2010s queer poly multicultural paradise, and part questionable 1970s-style idea of an indigenous community as hosts for everyone else's free-love, close-to-nature, Even Cowgirls Get the Blues commune. China Iron seems well-intentioned in going 180 degrees on the 1870s poem's often bloodthirsty portrayal of native people, which was motivated by colonisation. But, going by what I've read from North American commentators on portrayals of native people in literature, such as Debbie Reese, it seems likely to be patronising and inaccurate in other ways, and makes them the site of another, imaginary, colonial project by a different set of European-descended settlers. Jo is referred to several times as a two-spirit. On the one hand, as this is used from a native / gone-native perspective, it's the obvious term in English. But in this scenario, written by a Latina author, it inevitably brings to mind controversy about use of the term by gender non-conforming people without indigenous heritage. (In Martín Fierro part 2, there were, at least, two points borne out by known anthropology and archaeology from the Southern Cone. In China Iron the Indians seem like a hippie idealisation of North American peoples.) I would love to hear what indigenous people from South America actually think of China Iron, and about more famous works of Latin American literature, but am not sure where to find these articles, and what I've said here makes assumptions. The two Argentinian reviews I've read didn't go into this at all (though they took opposing views on whether it was important to have read Martín Fierro to understand China Iron)

Regardless, it is a lot of fun, not least at this time of vocal and imaginative Latin American feminism, to hear about Martín Fierro himself - icon of Argentine masculinity - queered. Some of this is extrapolated from the original, like his deep friendship with Cruz, and his becoming, for a while, the main parent to his children. (One might argue this is unhelpful in encouraging straight men to express feelings for their friends or participate in childcare, but the novel seems to come from a more radical perspective, where the heteropatriarchal outlook behind that reluctance is part of the problem.)

The scenes of China Iron part III brought to mind a recent question of the week from the Goodreads 21st Century Literature Group: "Is It Possible To Write About Happiness Engagingly?" The whole novel is pretty low on peril to Jo and Liz (despite the atrocities they hear about) and these utopian scenes are, more or less that, utopian, for almost all involved. Whilst, as I've already mentioned, they involve stereotyping, from some other angles, Part III is subversive: no tragic queers, no tragic Indians - and in not having much of a plot or a prominent antagonist, just people enjoying life in an extended happy ending (even if there are hints that colonial encroachment means their community can't last for generations) it doesn't conform to traditional structures of the novel.

There's plenty to think about here for such a short book. Even if there are reasons to be ambivalent about the final third, it's an interesting addition to this year's International Booker longlist, but I can't see it taking the prize ahead of substantial works like The Eighth Life.

[Hugh · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the Booker International Prize 2020
In this enjoyable historical fantasy, Cámara takes the epic nineteenth century Argentine gaucho poem Martín Fierro as her starting point, but in her version the narrator is his wife China, and Fierro is a peripheral character, as is the poem's writer José Hernández.

Both Hernández and Martín Fierro were new to me, but although familiarity might help, it is not essential, as the book itself tells you plenty about the poem, which is quoted in places and rewritten in others.

Bored and frustrated with a life of drudgery, China joins Liz, a Scottish adventurer in search of her husband, who has bought rights to some frontier land where they plan to settle. The first part describes their journey to the frontier in Liz's wagon. Their relationship becomes sexual. China and Liz are accompanied by a dog Estreya and join forces with an old gaucho Rosario and a herd of cattle.

In the second part they arrive at the frontier estancia where they meet its owner Hernández, hear what he has done with Fierro's poetry and plot their escape.

In the final part they meet and join a free spirited Indian tribe, with whom they also find Fierro a changed man, and Liz finds her husband. This unlikely band form their own utopian community.

The landscape and wildlife are prominent throughout, and I found it very enjoyable to read.

[Camilla · Rating 4 out of 5]

i dont speak spanish but i do speak lesbian

[Neale · Rating 4 out of 5]

Shortlisted for the 2020 International Booker.

I have not read “Martin Fierro” the poem by José Hernández that Gabriela Cabezón Cámara uses as a base for her narrative. I do know that with this novel, the author gives China Iron the main character role instead of Fierro. In fact, two strong female characters steal pretty much the whole narrative.

China is an orphan, her father having been killed by Fierro, who then proceeds to marry China and they have two sons before Fierro is conscripted and taken to the Indian frontier to fight with the army.

Rather than be upset, China, who is only fourteen, and has been a slave all her life, is ecstatic. Free for the first time in her life she jumps on board a wagon with a Scotswoman named Elizabeth, who is hell bent on travelling to their estancia to rescue her husband. An “Estancia” is a South American farm or ranch.

For the naïve China, this adventure is more of a cultural earthquake than shock. Everything is new for her, the land, the people, the wildlife and plants. While taking all this in, Liz educates China on the British Empire, and its relentless and insatiable drive for colonization.

As the women travel along together, they become lovers, another chance for Liz to educate China and open her eyes which have seen so little. Another freedom awakened. Both women change dramatically throughout the novel and are completely different characters by the end of the book.

Throughout the book, the author’s descriptive writing is so vivid, the landscape starts to feel like a painting. However, by the last third of the book, this descriptive writing became a little bit much for me, overpowering the narrative. At times it almost feels like a geographical expedition with the author describing the new cultures, plant life, and fauna in minute detail.

The time period in which the novel is set, late nineteenth century, is a tumultuous time for the seemingly never-ending open plains, or pampas, of Argentina. With the English encroaching, their beastly steam engines advancing every day, to the gauchos, the Argentinians, and Indians, locked in never-ending internecine battles.

I did enjoy reading how the Indians work in harmony with the land. How they adapt to flooding and live, to them at least, a somewhat utopic, nomadic lifestyle on the open pampas, juxtaposed against industrialisation and the claustrophobic smoggy miasma covered “modern” cities of Britain.

An enjoyable read. 3.5 Stars.

[Gala · Rating 4 out of 5]

Las aventuras de la China Iron es el primer libro que leo de Gabriela Cabezón Cámara, y sin lugar a dudas me sorprendió mucho. A decir verdad, no tenía muchas expectativas antes de empezarlo, y me terminó dejando una muy buena sensación. Un libro por un lado complejo por la forma en que está escrito y por el estilo de la autora, pero que por otro lado genera en el lector un estado especial, casi como si la prosa de Cabezón hipnotizara y no permitiera que abandonemos la lectura. Es una novela relativamente corta (menos de doscientas páginas), pero que sin embargo dice y tiene mucho para decir.

La historia mezcla cuestiones históricas (como la aparición de José Hernández como un personaje, o las referencias hacia Martín Fierro y Cruz) con la figura de la protagonista, que es la mujer de Fierro. Un día aparece Liz, inglesa, y junto con ella y su perro Estreya, además de algunas otras personas que irán apareciendo a lo largo de la novela emprenderán un viaje en carreta, pasando por desiertos, tolderías y estancias.

Es difícil explicar por qué es tan interesante el relato de la autora, pero es indudable que su prosa genera en el lector algo especial, algo que no pasa con todos los estilos de los escritores. Cabezón construye una voz (la de la protagonista, la China Iron) inconfundible y muy particular. Ese es, seguramente, lo más destacable de la novela. Es cierto que, al principio, puede resultar difícil engancharse a su forma de narrar, porque es bastante diferente a cualquier otra cosa que yo haya leído, pero cuando uno logra adentrarse en ese mundo es complejo, paradójicamente, salirse de él. Uno se va metiendo en ese ritmo, en ese universo tan bien construido.

[Claire · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wow. This is quietly revolutionary. And funny. Educational. Expansive. Brilliant.

Drawing inspiration from other texts that have in turn been inspired by a life, or experience lived in Argentina, whether it was the epic poem 'the gaucho' Martin Fierro (a lament or protest for a disappearing way of life) or the autobiography of self-identifying British naturalist (he was born and lived in Argentina until the age of 33) William Henry Hudson, Far Away & Long Ago, The Adventures of China Iron is another lament, or brilliant feat of the imagination, that takes readers on a different journey, that of a woman, cast in this version as China Iron, the wife of Martin Fierro, who in the original version is given just a few lines, likely not of her perspective, more like to be in relation to the man's loss.

1872
This adventure for the woman is a heroine's journey from dystopia to utopia, from naive to knowledgeable, from woman to young brother to lover, from unconscious to awakened, from survival to aware to thriving.

Part One - The Pampas
China was passed over to Martin Fierro in holy matrimony thanks to a card game. She bore him two children before he was conscripted, what a relief. Scottish Liz had her husband Oscar taken in error, so she packs a wagon to go and find the land they've procured, taking China and the dog Estreya with her. This is the beginning of China's awakening, she learns many things from Liz.

Who knows what storms Liz had weathered. Maybe loneliness. She had two missions in life: to resuce her gringo husband and to take charge of the estancia they they were to oversee.

Liz informs her about the ways of the British Empire, clothing, manners, geography, Indian spices. Some things she understands, others take longer for her to reconcile. She discovers 'the birds eye view' across the plains from the wagon.

And I began to see other perspectives: the Queen of England - a rich, powerful woman who owned millions of people's lives, but who was sick and tired of jewels and of meals in palaces built where she was monarch of all she surveyed - didn't see the world in the same as, for example a gaucho in his hovel with his leather hides who burns dung to keep warm. For the Queen the world was a sphere filled with riches belonging to her, and that she could order to be extracted from anywhere; for the gaucho, the world was flat surface where you galloped around rounding up cows, cutting the throats of your enemies before they cut your own throat, or fleeing conscription or battles.

China leaves behind neglect and enters the realm of non-violent company, nourishment and knowledge. She comes to think of the wagon as home, and to fall for the charm of Liz. They are able to track Indians by examining the dung of their animals. When they see it fresh, they change.

I took off my dress and the petticoats and I put on the Englishman's breeches and shirt. I put on his neckerchief and asked Liz to cut my hair short. My plait fell to the ground and there I was, a young lad.

They encounter Rosario and his herd of cows, and he becomes part of their party. We learn his tragic backstory as well. He laughs at China's clothing, but says it's a good idea and that all women should carry a knife the way men do.

We knew he was talking about his mother and how he'd have preferred her to have grown a beard if it meant she'd have stayed a widow with him by her side instead of that monster.

They make slow progress, in part due to China's desire that this 'in-between' peaceful co-existence, the happiest she's ever experienced until now never ends.

In Part Two, The Fort - they arrive at the estancia run by Hernandez, dressed in their chosen uniforms Liz had allocated from the stores inside the wagon;

uniforms for every kind of position on the estancia according to the imagination of the aristocrat and his stewards, Liz and Oscar.

Here they come across the opposite of what they'd found in the plains, here is a world run by the self-righteous Hernandez, who runs his estancia like a dictatorial regime, with strict rules and regulation, reward and punishment, inspiring hatred and allowing revenge. Seeing himself as the seed of civilisation, others as savages with no sense of history and the gauchos as his protegé, he set out to retrain them in his ways, with a whip and a rod.

Part Three - Indian Territory
In the final part they come into contact with the indigenous population and even the air feels easier to breathe. Here the language changes, perception changes, there is acceptance, equilibrium, reunion.

This whole section reminded me of the shape-shifting shamans, of a higher perception or consciousness, living with the indigenous people allows them to let go of all expectations and see with different eyes.

"Although we have been made
to believe that if we let go
we will end up with nothing,
life reveals just the opposite:
that letting go is
the real path to freedom."
Sogyal Rinpoche

Absolutely loved this, I hope it wins the International Booker, thoroughly deserving in my opinion.

Ever since I had the idea of giving China a voice, I had one thing clear in my mind: I wanted her tale to be an experience of the beauty of nature, freedom in body and mind; a story of all the potential and possibilities in store when you encounter other people, of the beauty of light. I wanted to write an elegy to the flora and fauna of Argentina, or whatever is left of it, an elegy to what used to be here before it all got transformed into one big grim factory poisoned with pesticides. I wanted to write a novel infused with light.

Interview: International Booker Prize 2020 Interview with author and translators

[Mateo R. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Deconstrucción del Martín Fierro y de la típica dicotomía argentina de civilización o barbarie. Lleno de vida y alegría. Prosa poética. Curioso sincretismo de culturas indígenas y criollas. Temáticas queer, sexualidad no tradicional y bien explícita, con un propósito narrativo, claramente anclada en la intencionalidad del libro.

Algo distinto, interesante.

Es notable el cambio total de atmósfera al comparar este libro con lo otro que he leído de esta autora: el combo del cuento y la novela gráfica Beya: Le viste la cara a Dios, que era oscuro, brutal y vengativo -y también aprecié mucho, solo que de diferente manera. Hay un poco de brutalidad en partes de este libro, pero es mucho más vital y, como dijo alguien por ahí, no se presenta como una (necesaria) venganza contra siglos de imposición de determinada moral, sino como una expresión de otras formas posibles de vivir y sentir.

[Jerrie · Rating 3 out of 5]

3.5⭐️ I was not familiar with the classic poem about the gaucho Martin Fierrro that this story was based upon before reading the book. The book focuses on Fierro’s wife, who makes only brief appearances in the poem. The landscape descriptions were vivid and I enjoyed the writing, but I got a little tired of the lengthy landscape sections by the end of the book.

[Eric Anderson · Rating 4 out of 5]

This is a novel with such an uplifting energy to it as it follows the adventures of a young woman caught in a time of bloody conflict and the formation of a modern nation. But it's also a clever and self-assured historical satire in the way it upturns patriarchal values in favour of those who are marginalized – especially female and queer individuals. “The Adventures of China Iron” feels like a comedy in the classic sense of beginning in tragic circumstances and ending with a joyous resolution. Set in Argentina during the political turbulence of 1872, the story concerns a journey of a heroine born into nothing; she is an orphan without a name, raised by a tyrannical woman and forced into marriage during her adolescence to the gaucho Martin Fierro, a heroic masculine figure from Argentine folklore. After giving birth to two sons she is cast aside by her famed husband and this is where the novel starts with this heroine establishing her own name as well as naming a stray dog who has become her only friend. She reclaims the name China from its dismissive/negative connotations (it's a Quechuan term for a lower-class girl or woman) and maintains her husband's surname of Iron, the English word for Fierro. From here she bands together with Liz, a Scottish woman travelling across country and Rosario, a cattle farmer searching for somewhere to set up with his herd. We follow their entertaining journey to find a home and establish a family that is “linked by more than bloodlines.”

Read my full review of The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara on LonesomeReader

[Mell Ferraz · Rating 4 out of 5]

Não canso de associar a palavra "potente" a essa leitura. O livro cresce ao ganhar significados profundos em relação a temas como a identidade latino-americana, a sexualidade não heteronormativa, o estrangeirismo, a colonização, o patriarcado e tantos outros temas que precisamos discutir mais e mais. Possui cenas de autodescobertas da protagonista que são lindas, e também as eróticas mais bem escritas que já devo ter lido. Com uma escrita singela e poética, me conquistou desde a primeira página!

[Navi · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was in a dreamlike trance while reading this book. The author is an expert in painting a vivid and evocative description of the landscape which did a great job transporting me to 1872 Argentina. Although this is a short read, it packs a serious punch!

[Paul Fulcher · Rating 3 out of 5]

Now longlisted for the International Booker

She looked at my doubtfully, passed me a cup of hot liquid and said ‘tea’ in English, assuming, correctly, that I wouldn’t know the word. ‘Tea’ she said to me, and that word - which in Spanish, ‘ti’, sounds like a gift ‘to you’, ‘for you’ - is apparently a daily custom in England, and that’s how I learnt my first word in that language which was my mother tongue. And tea is what I’m drinking now, while the world seems beset by darkness and violence, by a furious noise that is in fact just one of the frequent storms that shake this river.

Translated by Fiona Mackintosh and Iona Macintyre from Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s 2017 novel Las aventuas de la China Iron, this book is part of a (welcome) recent trend to retell classic literature from a different perspective. Here the foundational Argentinian epic poem, by José Hernández, about the gaucho Martin Fierro is re-told from the viewpoint of his wife, mentioned only briefly in passing in the original, and the whole, including Fierro’s own story, given a LGBT+ perspective.

At the start of the novel, Fierro having been forcibly conscripted, his wife meets a red-headed Englishwoman (or possibly a Scot - as the translator's note, English/Scottish/British are used rather interchangably in the original, reflecting an Argentinian view), Liz, whose husband was also taken.

Fierro's wife has no parents (and is likely an illegitimate child of a landowner father with someone from a different social class), and doesn't know her real birth name. She is known by her husband as'China', which as Liz points out is a generic and not particularly flattering term meaning woman/girl/servant [*] rather than a personal name, and so she ends up known as China Josephina Star Iron - Josephina an adopted name and Star and Iron the Anglicization of her dog's name and her husband's surname Fierro.

[* for the English reader, the similar but different sobriquet 'China' in Cockney rhyming slang does cause some confusion]

The two women travel together across the pampas, reaching a fort, and then on into Indian territory, seeking their husbands (rather half-enthusiastically in China's case) and some land that Liz and her husband had come to Argentina to farm, eventually finding them all, although not in the way they, and the reader conditioned by the original epic poem, might suspect.

The set-up of the novel is excellent, and ambition admirable, and the execution is also very well done, but I didn't find it a particularly satisfying personal reading experience.

I found both the first and third sections of the novel dragged a little. They are filled with lots of nature writing, plus, in the final section, a rather magic-mushroom-fuelled idealised view of the pan-sexual nature-infused lifestyle of the Indians they encounter. The intention, showing the beauty of both the local flora and fauna and the indigenous culture, and the harmony between them, before this was spoiled by settlement and industrialization, I understand but the subject matter didn't hold my attention.

I rather more appreciated the middle section, at the fort. The fort turns out to be run by a Colonel José Hernández, here, in a meta-device, reinvented as a keen enthusiast for economic development, as well as having stolen the songs of the gaucho Fierro, and published them, profitably, as his own. And for the English reader, his admiration for the blueprint presented by the English industrial revolution and the development of the railways, makes for an interesting point of reference.

But herein I think lies my personal issue, my own failing not the book's, with the rest of the novel. In this section, the authorial link to the original poem is very clear, but it made me suspect I had missed much of the intertextuality elsewhere. This Spanish language review (https://www.enestosdias.com.ar/3333-l...) suggests a proper appreciation requires much greater familiarity with the original poem than I have.

And this knowledge gap was, I think, exacerbated by the translators, understandably, deciding to use their own translation where Cabezón Cámara quotes from, or alludes to, the original, rather than the classic 1935 Walter Owen version (https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedi...). I can see their rationale, but it does make cross-references harder to spot - e.g. Liz's husband Oscar is referred to as what Fierro called (in his famous song) a ‘Jimmy-gringo’ from Britain, but I am not sure what this refers to in the Owen version. In the Owen version, when Fierro is conscripted, others caught up are:

A gringo hurdy-gurdy man,
With a dancing monkey there,
Was doing his bit to help the fun;
They roped him too, though he tried to run;
A big soft-looking fellow was he,—
And he cried for sheer despair.

And an English digger of ditches too,
That had dodged the draft before,
By telling the Justice, I understand,
That he came from 'Inca-la-Perra’ land,—
He took to his heels and got to the hills
By the skin of his teeth, no more.

Which, if either, is the Jimmy Gringo, I am unsure.

So overall - 4 stars for the conception and execution but 2.5 for my personal experience.

[Delfina · Rating 4 out of 5]

La china, esa china que en el Martin Fierro apenas se nombra, es acá protagonista. Es ella quien nos narra su viaje por La Pampa, una Pampa que es puro cielo. Donde la flora y la fauna parecen articular su propio lenguaje.

Una vez que Fierro es obligado a sumarse al ejército. La China se despide de todo lo que la ata en la tapera y decide sumarse al viaje en carreta que planea Liz, una mujer inglesa, que va a buscar a su marido, el gringo, también reclutado. Al viaje se suman, primero, Estreya, un perro negro cantor y luego Rosario, un poco gaucho, un poco indio, un poco guaraní.

Poco le importa a nuestra China encontrar a Fierro, lo que quiere es la aventura. Devorarse el mundo y ser devorada. De ahí, la gula de la mirada, el hambre del cuerpo que también observa, desatado de sí mismo. La China se nombra, se bautiza hasta ser muchas, hasta ser todas las que no le permitieron ser. Y es ahí, a través de esa multiplicidad de cuerpos y de ojos —que nunca son suficientes— que la China habita el placer.

El libro está dividido en tres partes: el desierto, el fortín y tierra adentro. Tres espacios explorados en la narrativa gauchesca. De la «civilización» a la «barbarie», conceptos que se desconfiguran a medida que los personajes se acercan a las tierras de Kaukalitrán, un paraíso.

[Diego Lovegood · Rating 4 out of 5]

Una maravilla de novela.
Preciosa y bien lograda la voz narrativa.

[Paula Mota]

DNF
Resposta feminina ao poema "Martín Ferro" de José Hernández, uma obra muito popular na Argentina. É engraçado, mas no fundo é uma "coming of age road trip", e eu não sou apreciadora de livros sobre viagens e não estou com paciência para histórias de inocência. Como se não bastasse, está sempre a falar da chuva, e isso para mim não é literatura, é conversa de circunstância na padaria.

Até à página 34:
"One rainy dawn I put on my first ever raincoat."
"It was raining again and light was reflected on all living things."
"Until the rain came again and once more we’d see a cemetery of Indian braves at our feet.
"It poured with rain and the water swept away the merciful dust."

[Henk · Rating 4 out of 5]

Queerness and sex positivity are persuasive in the narrative, coupled with a love for nature and awe for the incredible Argentine landscape. The narrative is exuberant and joyful, even though live outside of civilisation is maybe depicted as too idyllic
Up until that point my life had been absent somehow. My life hadn’t been my own, maybe that was why I was always so far away, maybe not, I don’t know.

I enjoyed The Adventures of China Iron, shortlisted for the International Booker prize 2020. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara offers a kaleidoscopic tale of an abused girl of 14 who ditches her two kids when her husband is conscripted into war. A journey on wagon through the pampa with a woman from England (Elizabeth "Liz") and a gaucho called Rosa ensues.
Inspired on A 19th century poem, we are offered an alternative history of a two-spirited person and a different take, reminiscent of Orlando, on a changing Argentina.

More thoughts to follow!

[Coos Burton · Rating 3 out of 5]

Pronto la reseña.

[Neil · Rating 4 out of 5]

I am slightly frustrated as I write this review. As I read the book, I made notes on what I felt were the key themes emerging (there are several), but, when I got to the end, I discovered a note from the translators that did all the work for me. Now it will look like my review is simply plagiarism.

“Martin Fierro” is an epic Argentine poem (2,316 lines long) that tells the tale of the eponymous gaucho (for Pynchon fans, Martin Fierro is also referenced in Gravity’s Rainbow). The poem begins with Fierro’s conscription into the army which means he and his wife are separated. This book, like several recent novels I have read, takes someone who is a minor female character in an old story and moves her to a central position in a re-written version of the story. This is the story of China Iron ("Fierro" translates as iron) who meets Liz from Scotland and sets off on an adventure.

For a short novel, it packs in a lot of stuff.

There is a history novel as China and Liz travel around an Argentina that is being invaded by British travellers with an eye on expansion of the empire, on bringing the railways to Argentina, on extracting wealth. At the same time, this history novel documents the ongoing disappearance of the gaucho way of life and the violence involved in building a nation.

There is a natural history novel. There is awe at the landscape and at the variety of flora and fauna that abounds in the pampas and along the rivers. There are lives lived in balance with nature.

There is an LGBTQ novel as some characters discover there are other options in life than the heterosexual relationships they have experienced so far. There is a send up of traditionally masculine gaucho world (one chapter of the book re-writes a key scene from the original poem, using poetry with the same verse structure as the original but dramatically changing the narrative of the scene).

And all of this is encased in the story of China Iron. It is China's sexual awakening that we hear about, it is through China’s eyes that we see the natural wonders of the land, it is China’s growing understanding of national and international politics that we see developing as her eyes are opened to the British empire and to the political manoeuvring of those in authority.

I'll end with an excerpt from the book blurb on the back cover:

"This subversive retelling of Argentina’s foundational gaucho epic Martin Fierro is a celebration of the colour and movement of the living world, the open road, love and sex, and the dream of lasting freedom. With humour and sophistication, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara has created a joyful, hallucinatory novel that is also an incisive critique of national myths."

[flor · Rating 5 out of 5]

a veces no me doy cuenta la cantidad casi nula de libros que leí que tengan vínculos románticos y sexuales entre mujeres hasta que leo uno y me encuentro llorando cada tres paginas. esto me pasó con las aventuras de la china iron. lo elegí para
mi parcial de narrativa argentina (ojalá me haya ido bien) y lo leí inicialmente para la materia así que sé la cantidad de temas y cosas que trata que no son necesariamente el vínculo entre liz y la china pero bueno, a mi en el fondo del corazón me quedó eso. no recuerdo haber leído otro libro lésbico situado en argentina y menos ubicado a finales del siglo xix. creo que voy a tener que sanar esta herida de no haberme podido ver representada ni a mí, ni a mi sexualidad, ni a mi deseo ni a mis vínculos románticos en ningún lado leyendo más. y ojalá escribiendo más.

[Emejota (Juli) · Rating 5 out of 5]

Una locura bellísima. La china, la inglesa y un gaucho amigo por el paisaje cambiante de Las Pampas, que termina siendo un personaje mas. Está escrita de una manera hermosa, a través de un velo poético.

La trama sería como una reversión del Martin Fierro, o mejor, un lado B de la historia pero rompiendo con las ideas del libro original. Se da vuelta todo. Los conceptos de indio, gaucho, progreso, trabajo se miran desde otro lugar. Y esa mirada se presenta sin imposición.
El libro invita a dejar todo un rato y pasarla bien.

[Adriana · Rating 1 out of 5]

Leí este libro porque me lo prestaron y porque ahora soy más curiosa pero a veces están bien los prejuicios. Admito que las primeras páginas me gustaron, está escrito de una forma enrarecida que me copó y arranca con el personaje de una inglesa no demonizada que me hizo pensar que iba a dedicarse a tirar abajo lugares comunes. Pues no. Todo está subrayado. Martín Fierro es gay, la china es lesbiana, un tipo se llama Rosa y el perro Estreya, José Hernández es un estanciero hijo de puta y los indios son buenos y viven en una comunidad hippie sin roles de género. Bah.

[Santiago · Rating 5 out of 5]

Road trip argentino en los tiempos de Martín Fierro. La China, una inglesa y un amigo que levantan en el camino recorren la pampa descubriendo que la vida no se ajusta a lo previsto, sino que se abre en sendas secretas, ajenas a toda certeza.

[bianca *‧.₊˚*੭*ˊᵕˋ੭.* · Rating 5 out of 5]

Pero la nuestra era una guerra de día a día, no de eternidades

Es el mundo de Gabriela y nos está permitiendo jugar con ella.

Las aventuras de la China Iron narra la historia de una travesía. En formato road novel y con un realismo grotesco, Cabezón Cámara toma uno de los personajes borrados de la historia oficial argentina: la china, la esposa del gaucho Martín Fierro, esa niña ganada en un partido de truco que a los 14 años ya había parido dos hijos. En esta nueva reescritura de nuestra obra fundacional, el lamento del gaucho, la tragedia que le da origen y motivo a aquella primera historia, se convierte en la fortuna de la china, en un nuevo motor narrativo. La historia comienza cuando a Fierro se lo llevan y nuestra protagonista escapa acompañada de su perro, Estreya.

La falta de ideas me tenía atada, la ignorancia. No sabía que podía andar suelta, no lo supe hasta que lo estuve.

En el camino se encuentra con Elizabeth, Liz, una inglesa en busca de su marido y con Rosa, Rosario, un gaucho medio indio-medio guaraní. En esta libertad que ofrece esa carreta impensada, atravesada por distintas costumbres e idiomas, cruzando La Pampa nutricia, es que la China encuentra su renacer. Descubre un idioma nuevo, nuevos relatos y nuevas formas de vivir. El relato, estructurado en tres partes, tres momentos del viaje, da lugar a nuevos mundos que se encuentran, nuevos amores que florecen.

La China quedará maravillada ante este nuevo mundo que se abre ante ella, el mundo inglés donde toman té vestidos de seda y lana y diamantes y porcelana, el mundo tierra adentro donde "entre los indios ni la ropa ni la forma de vivir está determinad por el sexo", un mundo donde humanos, animales, plantas, agua y tierra son lo mismo y un todo. La China encuentra la utopía en este presente desde el cual narra la historia de Josephine Star Iron, La China, Tararira, "my good boy".

Me sorprendió, no entendí, no sabía que se podía y se me había revelado como una naturaleza, ¿por qué no iba a poderse? No se hacía, nomás, allá en el caserío, las mujeres no se besaban entre ellas

Con un manejo ejemplar de la intertextualidad y la narración, la autora encuentra una identidad propia desde el cual narrar. Con un estilo inconfundible, una crítica sólida y personajes potentes, Gabriela Cabezón Cámara nos invita a repensar una obra que, lejos de ser estática, está abierta a constantes reinterpretaciones. Una historia fresca que deja mucho para analizar.

[Abbie | ab_reads · Rating 4 out of 5]

(#gifted @thebookerprizes) Who is up for a queer retelling of José Hernández’s epic poem Martín Fierro? Who, like me, is severely under-read when it comes to Latin American classics and has never heard of Martín Fierro before now?? Well never fear because this book is still amazing even if you have zero context of this epic poem! I wikipedia’d it a few times but I think The Adventures of China Iron stands well on its own, and if you ARE familiar with Martín Fierro you’ll just have an even better time with it!
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Set in the Pampas of Argentina, this is Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s reimagining of an epic poem, told from the perspective of Fierro’s young wife who he left behind while he went off doing gaucho things. We journey with China (pronounced Cheena, and referring to a woman, wife, servant or girl, and not really a name at all but what China is used to going by) both physically and mentally as she traverses the Pampas with her new companion Liz, a Scottish woman and discovers her sexual awakening along the way.
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The translation was undertaken as a team by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh and they have done an incredible job. The language in this book is so rich, filled with references to Argentinian nature, and then smatterings of Guaraní vocabulary later, not to mention they had to tackle translations of poetry. Needless to say they pull it off spectacularly, transporting the reader to the scene, discovering a whole new world alongside China Iron.
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This book just proved to me that @charcopress are out here publishing the most cutting edge books in the industry. You need to check them out if you’re at all interested in contemporary Latin American lit!
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A sensual, subversive novel that just begs to be reread and analysed. Seriously, there are so many layers to this book and so many lenses it could be read through - you would read it differently every time I think, and gain something new each time too. I’ve rated it 4 stars for now but I do think the more times I read it, the more I would get from it and the more I would love it!

[Kamil · Rating 4 out of 5]

My video review: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=8PiCw...

[Shawn Mooney (Shawn Breathes Books)]

Too sentimental.

[daph pink ♡ · Rating 1 out of 5]

Even with the stunning cover and such a tempting premise, it didn't really grab my attention. I've come to realize that I find it difficult to get into slow-paced books, so I usually pass on a book if the first 50 pages don't grab my attention. Additionally, the first fifty pages had virtually no narrative and were plain boring. As the title implies, these are simply adventures.