Brown Neon

by Raquel Gutiérrez

A meditation on southwestern terrains, intergenerational queer dynamics, and surveilled brown artists that crosses physical and conceptual borders.

Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut essay collection Brown Neon gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships. For Gutierrez, terrain is essential to understanding that no story, no matter how personal, is separate from the space where it unfolds. Whether contemplating the value of adobe as both vernacular architecture and commodified art object, highlighting the feminist wounding and transphobic apparitions haunting the multi-generational lesbian social fabric, or recalling a failed romance, Gutiérrez traverses complex questions of gender, class, identity, and citizenship with curiosity and nuance.

Genres: Essays, Nonfiction, Memoir, LGBT, Queer, Latinx, Audiobook

212 pages, Paperback

First published June 7, 2022

About the author

raquel gutiérrez is an arts critic/writer, poet and educator. Born and raised in Los Angeles Gutiérrez credits the queer and feminist DIY post-punk 'zine culture of the 1990s plus Los Angeles County and Getty paid arts internships with introducing her/them to the various vibrant art & music scenes and communities throughout Southern California. Gutiérrez is a 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism, as well as a 2017 recipient of the The Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. Her/Their writing has recently appeared in or is forthcoming in Art In America, NPR Music, Places Journal, and The Georgia Review. Gutiérrez teaches in the Oregon State University-Cascades Low Residency Creative Writing MFA Program. Her/Their first book of prose, “Brown Neon,” is an ekphrastic memoir that considers what it means to be a Latinx artist during the Trump era and will be published by Coffee House Press, June, 2022. Gutiérrez calls Tucson, Arizona home.

Reviews

[Jessica Woodbury · Rating 4 out of 5]

This was definitely outside my usual house (I read it for a queer book club) but there was a lot that I liked about it. It is still more academic than I usually read, but the subject matter was really fascinating. And while I am not going to read a whole book about art criticism, for example, the way Gutierrez mixed in her personal stories with the bigger ideas she was grappling with worked.

It's worth noting that all the academics in my book club found it super readable, so if that's you then it'll feel a lot more digestible. But if you're like me it'll take some effort. I was glad to have the imposed deadline.

I was also really worried in the first essay that it would go to some not great places. A lot of butch lesbians have treated trans masc folks badly, but Gutierrez can see that happening without joining in. A lot of the book is about the way things change through generations, including queer identity.

[Erik · Rating 3 out of 5]

In Brown Neon, Raquel Gutierrez's essayist abilities bring about a conversation on art, queerness, butchness, and brownness.

Gutierrez opens their collection of essays telling us the story of her time with Big Poppa, a singular figure who shaped queer history, politics, and rights from the 70s onward. In this essay, she discusses the tension between those who lean towards butchness and those who choose to transition and the beauty that lies between. From there Gutierrez discusses her Latinx experience and its intersections with her queer and working-class identities. An artist and art critic theirself, Gutierrez centers her writing on these topics around queer, brown artists and brings light to their work.

Brown Neon left me wanting more of some parts and less of others. Gutierrez's essays on gender and butchness were novel and contributed important thoughts on the topics, but some of her art essays seemed more like insider topics in which she personally knew artists few other of us do. Either way, Gutierrez's voice is one I'll definitely read again.

[Sarah-Hope · Rating 4 out of 5]

The promotional material for Raquel Gutiérrez's Brown Neon describes it thusly: "Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut essay collection Brown Neon gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships." Really, I can't sum it up any better than that.

Gutiérrez is a brilliant and original thinker with a prose voice that moves between the erudite and the informal. My favorite parts of this essay collection were those dealing with butch identity in the range of nonbinary forms it takes these days and the sections on immigration, which make it soberingly clear the human lives at stake along the U.S. border. The sections about underground and cutting-edge art scenes were more difficult for me—because I know very little about that topic and couldn't necessarily pull up my own information about the artists and works that they discuss.

Because Gutiérrez thinks richly—and compels readers to do the same—this is an excellent title to keep bedside and devote one's self to from time to time. That lets one barrage of ideas settle before the reader takes on the next. Gutiérrez is saying things that matter immensely and deserves the attention a thoughtful reading requires.

I received a free electronic review copy of this title from EdelweissPlus; the opinions are my own.

[Julia · Rating 4 out of 5]

Overall a very thought-provoking collection of essays, but sometimes the language and references went way over my head, which is no one's fault, but I also felt like some of the essays had a looser structure than I would've preferred (though I'm sure that's also partially the point). Those two things make for 4 stars instead of 5, but this is still an incredible book. I would highly recommend this to anyone interested in essays written by a queer Latinx artist who deftly examines all the aforementioned intersections of identity in interesting and beautiful ways.

[gpears · Rating 5 out of 5]

insightful essays exploring butch histories, desert geographies, queerness, aging and chicanidad…audio book read by the author was wonderful..hearing her read the candid and vulnerable writing aloud made it feel like catching up with an old friend

[Christopher Alonso · Rating 4 out of 5]

Gutiérrez's debut collection tackles themes of butch history, activism, immigration, geography, and art, and that's barely getting at all the complicated ways these themes interact and become informed by each other. It was great.

[Cooper Lee Bombardier · Rating 5 out of 5]

Brown Neon is an opportunity to ride shotgun in the brilliant mind and heart of butch Latinx writer, artist, critic, and fellow APR* Raquel Gutiérrez as she/they witnesses the interstices of borders between genders, bodies, communities, races, ethnicities, and nations. As our physical proximities to each other continue to disperse due to class, economic, climate, political, and relational dynamics, Brown Neon models queer genealogy and creative community-making, scoping out toward both past and future, a drawing-in of the people and places and relationships that make us and that we make, even when the contours of those loci shift. As the narrator drives across the terrains of the Southwest, the reader feels relief when her old Toyota truck makes it home, or at least breaks down somewhere with a town mechanic. The truck becomes something of a proxy for a broken butch heart, fractured by colonialism and loss, made whole again by art and brown artists. I loved this book.


*Aging punk rocker; what, didn't you get your card in the mail yet?

[Kathleen · Rating 5 out of 5]

"If there was anything to do with your privilege, it was to risk it. And it would never be enough" (73).

"Living in the borderlands, you count among your friends and neighbors those who want things to be different here. We use our time to stay aware, to be in service. We live here to embody the lesson that everyone should be entitled to improve upon the conditions of their life" (77).

"Our historical imprints enhance the value of a neighborhood. Our histories sell, whereas our lives obstruct profits" (123).

"For Abramovic, performance 'is the moment when the performer with his own idea steps into his own mental, physical construction [of that idea[ in front of the audience. For Abramovic the blood and knife are real, whereas in theater they are not" (187).

[Andrea · Rating 4 out of 5]

My biggest complaint with this collection is probably that I read it too fast. I actually found the writing to be really soothing, especially the essays related to landscapes in CA and AZ. I also appreciated the unique queer perspective of Gutiérrez. The summary blurb is accurate.

[Simona · Rating 3 out of 5]

In an adept mix of academic criticism and personal vulnerability, Gutiérrez explores queer and butch history; borders, immigration, and geographies; class and chicanidad; and art, performance and landscape through insightful and thought-provoking essays. I'm glad to have stumbled across this gem in a little free library!

[Emily]

I would have liked this a lot better as a documentary film rather than an essay collection. For a book so concerned with the visual arts, it wasn’t nearly as visual as I would have liked. I did really enjoy the chapter about visiting the US/Mexico border wall prototypes, however—it made me deeply reflect on what I consider to have artistic and aesthetic value and why.

[Ondřej Trhoň · Rating 4 out of 5]

Je to hezky zamysleni nad dykes, nějakým clashi mezi starou a novou queer generací, hodně o KRAJINĚ ale jakoby nějak mě to nevzalo na konci ale spoko pučim klidně

[Rebecca Cairo · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book’s writing style was so dense - it took me so long to read this book and I almost DNFed many times. However, every time I read more pages I realized I actually was super interested in the content. This book is very queer especially in the gender aspect and it is all about (queer and lesbian) Latinx experiences in America as well as the art world. I’m really glad I stuck with this one.

[Luke · Rating 3 out of 5]

When I started this essay collection, I found myself deeply interested by the politics and culture of lesbian society (such as it is!) laid bare in a way that I’ve never really seen before. It felt like being let in somewhere that, while you don’t belong, was willing to accept you for a moment, just to see how the other half lives. And, truly, these essays are fantastic, covering a wide swathe of personal heartbreak and discovery, political activism and art criticism.

However, I did find some passages tiresome, and it felt like every person introduced was accompanied by 3-5 identity qualifiers, which began to veer into the territory of exhaustion. At the same time, I understand that to be understood fully at a glance, without explanation, is a privilege, and so it didn’t take away from the collection’s power.

As well, as would be expected from a deeply personal assemblage of writing , some parts of this book are almost impenetrable unless one is versed in the specific localities, scenes and communities. One essay in particular feels like messy interpersonal internet drama which is loaned some credibility by vague aspirations of a broader context within racial/cultural politics.

I feel like when I write a lot about a book it’s usually because it’s affected me in one way or another, this is no different.

[J Gatz · Rating 1 out of 5]

This author writes about the importance of uplifting brown trans masc voices but tears down younger brown trans masc writers with baseless "critiques" on their writing that are just insults. They talk the talk but they do not walk the walk in real life. If the disposition of an author affects your decision on reading an author's work, I would skip this one.

[Mattia · Rating 3 out of 5]

I like the personal essays and the parts about the wall and border crossers in the desert and art criticism. A lot of the book was too academic or listing artists and bands I've never heard of and I skimmed it. I was reading the Stonewall Reader at the same time and that book also had an essay by Jeanne Cordova.

[Deandra · Rating 3 out of 5]

The writing was really tough for me. But the content was fantastic and gave me so much to think about.

[Dillon Crockett · Rating 5 out of 5]

As a white cis gay man who has lived in North Carolina his whole life, much of this book felt to me like an anthropological and geographical study of a culture and a region much foreign to my own. Raquel spends a great deal of time discussing the ways her identity as a butch lesbian frames her experiences, her personal and family relationships, and the various social scenes and circles in which she is experienced and fluent in living. The first section of the book introduced me to a vocabulary which, although new to me, clearly had a thorough history, evolution, and various points of contention engrained into the dialogue of a well-established and diverse community. I appreciated this opportunity to look in and learn about what it means to identify with these and other various appellations on different gender and sexuality spectra.

Likewise, although Raquel in many places beautifully discussed different landscapes of the desert ecosystems of the southwestern borderlands, like Joshua Tree National Park and the areas surrounding Tucson, I often felt lost elsewhere in the book as I tried unsuccessfully to follow and understand her references to different neighborhoods of Los Angeles, identified only by cardinal direction. As someone who has never visited this region of the country, I appreciated this intricately-written and inspiring glimpse, but as someone who has never visited Los Angeles specifically, I was often lost.

Raquel clearly poured all of her mind, heart, and soul into this writing. You can tell clearly from every essay that she thinks and feels deeply about the people and projects she involves herself with. She and I have very few shared experiences, so it was interesting to learn about her various journeys, both personal and professional, and her constant use of figurative language to describe both the extravagant and the otherwise mundane was literarily intoxicating. Despite having very different life trajectories, several of her interests (such as adobe masonry, land art, the humanity/dehumanization of migrants--which seem disparate but which are all inextricably linked to her life in the southwest) were characterized in ways so convincing of their profound need to be attended to that I felt excited to go alongside her as she characterized her various explorations into these subjects.

There were some places, albeit rare instances, where I wondered whether her use of language would unnecessarily hinder readers' accessibility of her text, specifically where she casually brings mentions of phenomenology and ontology into her writing. There were times where I wondered, to what extent is she writing these essays for her readers, and to what extent is she writing just for herself? Who is her audience? Is it just her close friends or those in her own regional and topical networks? Is she concerned with being understood by the general public? Is she concerned at all with being relatable to someone like me, who does not share her gender, sexuality, generation, ethnicity, spirituality, geography, or language? I think generally, although the topics of this book are wide-ranging and interesting, the book has a very niche audience in terms of who can totally relate to and understand it in its entirety. I also see this approach as being just fine and totally valid. As an essayist, she is producing essays as works of art, not works of journalism, and the idea that they have to be fully relatable and understood is perhaps too limiting and an unfair and unproductive expectation on my part. I had to remind myself several times when I was beginning to feel frustrated that I was losing comprehension (what does it mean to move from east to southwest L.A.?) that it was okay and that I can still read to appreciate and to learn in much the same way as admiring an intriguing and inspirational, if not somewhat confusing and inexplicable, work of art, worthy of existing in its own right.

I am very glad this book grabbed my attention, and I very much look forward to (hopefully!) reading many more by Raquel in future years!

[Mari C.L. Murphy · Rating 3 out of 5]

At times beautiful, moving, embodied, meditative and/or urgent, this essay collection was above all uneven.

I am an academic and thus I don’t shy away from the type of mixed-genre essay that weaves academic theorizing amidst other modes of thought and reflection, but too often in this collection it felt like important aspects got lost.

The opening section was, for me, the most successful, with the final section the least. Much was of interest and all was worthy of thought; Muñoz’s influence was clear in the best moments, and finding out they were Gutiérrez’s advisor thus did not come as a shock.

There was so much worthy and haunting thought and image happening, especially around lost loves and the border wall/border crossings/existing in the spaces near the border. In contrast, I found many of the essays (ironically) about performance art extremely hard to access and parse, as the (often cursory) descriptions of the pieces were often left disconnected from deeper theorizations. I could have used either less description or more gloss; the long-winded descriptions of performances simply left me bored, and I was happy to be finished with the final section (whereas earlier moments left me wanting more).

[Diana Arterian · Rating 5 out of 5]

What I wrote on LitHub about this compelling collection that often moves between funny and poignant within a sentence or two:

Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut essay collection Brown Neon is what she calls “an ekphrastic memoir.” It zips between a variety of images from her lovelorn aches, sizzling desert heat, stick-and-poke tattoos, adobe brick making, fibroids, water stations at the border, the photographs and life of Laura Aguilar. While art undergirds much of the collection, this is largely an exploration of Donna Haraway’s notion of “oddkin”—cultural/social/emotional family through, in Gutiérrez’s case, queerness, art-making, Latinx identity, and the Southwest.

The relationships she fosters and interrogates, as carefully as she does physical structures and art production, are what drive these essays. There is an undeniable love of the desert landscape occupied by Anglos and often, simultaneously, defined by our most egregious representatives’ politics: the wild west for white cowboys and few others. “I felt oceanic toward the desert’s beauty,” Gutiérrez writes, “a beauty permeated by the slow yet painful realization of colonization.”

[Sara Gerot · Rating 5 out of 5]

This was one of three essay collections that I read this summer, and it was just as good as the others. I enjoyed all the references to so many books and artists that I've loved, and even more all the new ones I was looking up while reading it. Adding to my list of things to read, and see. Growing up for part of my childhood in Tucson the desert is a really significant space to me and Guitierrez captures it so well . . . the literal and figurative desert. These excellent, smart, and fascinating essays about art, and people, and places are so fresh and interesting. It made me remember why I like reading about art almost as much as I like seeing it. And it takes a talent to do it well. With heart. And honesty. And this book does all of that.

[Teresa · Rating 5 out of 5]

- "But isn't that how we run into our exes these days? In the coffee shop, checking their social media presences that confirm their material absences in our lives?" (p. 66)

- "In some ways, this is how I define trauma. The obsessive rehearsal of the initial wound and refusal to release the concomitant humiliations that endure hauntologically. We need this pain to live. It becomes the story that holds attention. I have often sought a replication of such punishments. ... These are the familiar contours that comfort me. And rehearsing these scripts make them just legible enough for those who want to protect me, bear witness, or offer presence" (p. 187 - 188).

[Jake Rummel · Rating 4 out of 5]

I don't even have the vocabulary to talk about this book without exposing my ignorance on a bunch of stuff. I was really intrigued by their rendering of the complicated relationship between older lesbians and younger trans men. So much discourse I encounter on gender is people that do not know what they're talking about. Refreshing to read someone being very honest, personal and nuanced. It made returning to regular world of bad faith and bigotry a little demoralizing.

Given the personal nature of the early essays, the transition in the later ones to really detached art analysis is jarring. Felt like reading a really long museum label, so strangely drained of personality. Perplexing!

[Akiva ꙮ]

March 2, 2023 – page 16
I thought this was gonna be a commuting read, but then she used "ontologically" twice and "...although I likely would have transitioned myself if..." within the first essay, lol.

April 15, 2023 – page 34
Not feeling this, pretty close to DNF. Gutiérrez is trying to pack a lot of understated but deep emotion and theory and literary-ness into each paragraph and it's not quite gelling. And it's too dense to read casually.

May 20, 2023
Skimmed a bit more and returned to the library.

[nikita · Rating 3 out of 5]

I don't think I read this book in the way it should be consumed. But I also don't like reading two books at once. A lot of it was written in a meandering network style and takes you through several seemingly unrelated themes and seems almost journal-like. For this reason I think it should be read over the course of a longer time period. Personally, wasn't my favorite style for a memoir, but it gave me a lot to think about and I enjoyed learning about the queer Latinx culture in the US through the author's stories.

[Chad · Rating 4 out of 5]

I was spiraling into an abyss, waiting to see who would climb down after me.


Wordy af, this book of essays was an unexpected view into the world of art. I wish it hadn’t taken me two-thirds of the way through the book to remember that one could easily look up words on Libby e-books. However this was a beautiful book that examines the intersection of brown, queer, and artistic life.


They were conditioned by gender. They drank through their social anxieties. They had to abide by the strict binaries, the rules of civility, familial and institutional legibility.

[Bray · Rating 4 out of 5]

Beautifully written, a well-thought analytical approach to queerness and it’s relation to culture throughout time. It examines the influence of culture, environmentalism, capitalism, racism, and more on the impact of one’s identity and relationship to the world around them. A little more academic than my typical reads, it took a bit more to digest, but reading to appreciate the language served me well versus just focusing on the content itself.

[Josh Knebel · Rating 2 out of 5]

Only got to page 75. Too specific on the details. I, and Americans in general, have enough trouble knowing what continent things are in. This book gives very specific small town names and roads and people. Having not lived there myself or been remotely aware that these people existed I just don’t care.

There were many offhand comments that showed some political stances of the author. But these weren’t developed so I felt they were useless.

[Robert Schretzman · Rating 4 out of 5]

A description of life in an alien world on the same planet, in the same country. The place names are the same, but the life and times were completely beyond any life experience of my own. It feels like the best of sci fi and world building as well as alternate history. It was hard work to keep track of the cast of characters, but worth it in the end. Eye opening view of my own world.

[Hannah Jacoby-Brooks · Rating 4 out of 5]

Imma sucker for any mentor/mentee relationship especially that the mentor is an imperfect person. I read an excerpt prior to hearing Gutierrez speak about this book then I finished the essays. Entirely worth the look into a scene of cultural revolution in California with the intermix of art and being butch