Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Robin Myers

This fiercely imaginative reworking of colonial history...written in luminous, wild, lyrical and inventive language... is at once playful and devastating, tender and enraging. This imaginative novel critiques familiar narratives of colonialism and empire while offering moments of startling beauty and transformation. It is a vivid and audacious story that reclaims history through language itself

A bold and compassionate reimagining of an extraordinary queer life

A hallucinatory, innocent, fanciful and redemptive book. Cabezón Cámara’s historical fiction plays out like confession or revelation, a piece of real-unreal colonial apocrypha, glowing white hot, dancing like the heart of a pyre

Sumptuously translated by Robin Myers, We Are Green and Trembling is strikingly relevant to the present day. Cabezón Cámara uses history to illuminate and interrogate threats to trans representation and, in parallel, to interrogate the enduring, humanising effects of colonisation... [an] epic in miniature... a mercurial tale for all time

So sharp, so urgent, so brave. Gabriela Cabezón Cámara is one of the most authentic voices writing in Spanish today, and among her many talents is one that's especially hard to find: not only does she challenge and incite us, not only does she confront the darkness, but she also gives us in return the subversive courage to think of ourselves as more human, more alive, and more luminous than ever

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara’s writing is singular in the Spanish language: an intrepid pulse that shakes and disarms us in the face of the wordless power, both formidable and innocent, of the jungle and the creatures it portrays

Profoundly resonant with our current moment … Offers a searing critique of modernity’s colonial echoes: a resurgence of far-right ideology, cultural erasure, and gender-based oppression ... A story that is not only inclusive but also redemptive—anchored in the richness of language, the beauty of the natural world, and the power of storytelling to reclaim what history tries to erase

"Cabezón Cámara’s entrancing poetry reminds us how magical and frankly unpleasant it is to live through history

This is the truth of Gabriela Cabezón Cámara's literature: it's capable of questioning the very conception of the Western world through beauty.

Myers translates Cámara’s lyrical prose to gorgeous effect, turning even the most brutal of Antonio’s adventures into a beautiful reading experience... transformative writing—for character and reader alike

Polyphonic... A seamless, fever-dreamy exposé of inhumane colonialism, religiosity, and genocide

Sensuous and searing—a queer anticolonial picaresque

At the same time futuristic and ancestral. Its luminous prose pulses several times to moments of absolute radiance

The intensity of Gabriela Cabezón Camára’s moral commitment shines through… she has a tender love for her marginalized subjects, and for the jungle that they call home

From deep in the wilds of the New World, Antonio de Erauso writes a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the convent he escaped as a young girl. Since leaving his past behind, he’s become Antonio, conquistador. Now, hiding in the jungle and hounded by the army he deserted, Antonio is caring for two Guaraní girls he rescued from enslavement. But the New World has one more metamorphosis in store, which might save them all from extinction. 
 
Tender and surreal, We Are Green and Trembling conveys glimmers of hope for the future within the brutal colonial history of Latin America, finding in the rainforest a magical space for transformation.

Gabriela Cabezón Cámara

Praise for We Are Green and Trembling

This fiercely imaginative reworking of colonial history...written in luminous, wild, lyrical and inventive language... is at once playful and devastating, tender and enraging. This imaginative novel critiques ...

A bold and compassionate reimagining of an extraordinary queer life

A hallucinatory, innocent, fanciful and redemptive book. Cabezón Cámara’s historical fiction plays out like confession or revelation, a piece of real-unreal colonial apocrypha, glowing white hot, dancing like the he ...

This fiercely imaginative reworking of colonial history...written in luminous, wild, lyrical and inventive language... is at once playful and devastating, tender and enraging. This imaginative novel critiques ...

A bold and compassionate reimagining of an extraordinary queer life

A hallucinatory, innocent, fanciful and redemptive book. Cabezón Cámara’s historical fiction plays out like confession or revelation, a piece of real-unreal colonial apocrypha, glowing white hot, dancing like the he ...

This fiercely imaginative reworking of colonial history...written in luminous, wild, lyrical and inventive language... is at once playful and devastating, tender and enraging. This imaginative novel critiques ...

A bold and compassionate reimagining of an extraordinary queer life

A hallucinatory, innocent, fanciful and redemptive book. Cabezón Cámara’s historical fiction plays out like confession or revelation, a piece of real-unreal colonial apocrypha, glowing white hot, dancing like the he ...

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