Hello and happy Sarah Paulson’s birthday!!
My girlfriend and I watched The Prom on Netflix earlier this week, mostly because it stars People’s Most Beautiful Person in the World 2002, Nicole Kidman. It’s campy and fun and sparked some really great anti-James Corden memes.
It also somehow caused a bunch of people to take to Twitter about how “unrealistic” it is, which leads me to believe that none of those people have ever seen a musical before. The Prom isn’t designed to give us a realistic look at queer life in Indiana—it’s designed to give us Andrew Rannells ending homophobia in a crowded suburban mall. Fun!
The movie is also the polar opposite of this week’s recommendation, which is possibly the first historical fiction book I’ve ever picked up of my own volition. That’s probably because when I hear “historical fiction,” I think of WWII books about young men dying, which is very much not my genre of choice.
But as it turns out, I maybe love historical fiction—or at least I do when it involves queer people. I learned so much about Uruguay’s political history through a combination of this book and the dozen or so Google searches it caused me to make.
And in what is maybe a tiny spoiler, I’m thrilled to know that the country is now considered the most LGBTQ-friendly in Latin America. Enjoy!
— Becca
Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
Fiction, September 2019
TW: Homophobia, rape, conversion therapy, suicide, and abuse
In 1977 Uruguay, a military dictatorship regularly “disappears” citizens who dissent or go against the grain in any way. Obviously, being a queer woman in this environment is incredibly dangerous. And our story begins with five of them escaping to isolated Cabo Polonio for a week of freedom.
They spend their days grilling fresh fish over a fire, sharing secrets over bottles of whiskey, and having sex in the ocean, and these scenes are just glorious to read. Even now, days after finishing, I am longing for a close-knit group of queer friends with whom I can plan a beach trip.
When the week ends and the women are forced to return to their lives in Montevideo, it’s only a matter of time before they figure out a way to return to the coast. And they do, countless times over the next 35 years.
But as I’m sure you’ve guessed, there’s much more to this book than seaside vacations and queer joy. Each of the women faces very real danger just by being who they are. The political turmoil in Uruguay leaves them vulnerable every time they leave their homes, and several endure serious trauma by the book’s end.
I know this is a vague description, but De Robertis does such a phenomenal job of slowly unfolding each woman’s story that I don’t want to say too much and take away from the experience of learning the details exactly as she’s arranged them.
But for all of the trauma contained in this book, it’s not a story of endless queer suffering. It feels like a realistic look at life under a military dictatorship—and at five queer women whose very existence is a giant middle finger at the regime.
Queer points:
+6 for a hot lesbian butcher
+9 for five queer women embarking on a home renovation project
+16 for a character who smuggles what is possibly the first dildo in Uruguay across an international border
Buy it from Booksmith