Pornografía para piromaníacos / Wenceslao Bruciaga / 2023

I picked this book up at a Guatemalan bookstore based off the title and premise alone, and I was blown away. My interest in erotic literature started with Anais Nin earlier this year, where I was surprised that something that was ostensibly smut could have so much to say about intimacy, queerness, and relationships, veering into the unsayable aspects of human experience. I entered Pornografia para piromaniacos piqued by its inciting incident: the suicide of a gay Latinx porn actor and closeted trans woman that rattles the industry. The novel follows two characters, Pedro and Jeff, in the aftermath of this loss. Both are aging porn stars struggling to adapt to a gentrifying San Francisco, an ever-evolving queer culture, and unsatisfying relationships. 

Pedro sees himself as the breadwinner for a nonbinary trophy husband, who is also a porn actor, who manages Pedro’s social media platforms, as well as his own up-to-date queer influencer channel. Through their relationship, porn scenes, and flashbacks we learn about the traumatic origins of Pedro’s queer discovery and the dark circumstances of his migration to the United States from Mexico. Pedro lives his life in fear of cancellation, as he has seen many of his peers go down for a mix of different toxicities. His precarious economic well-being depends on his reputation, and the pressure makes him act out violently periodically throughout the novel. 

Jeff, on the other hand, is reeling from a heartbreak with a closeted baseball star. While Pedro’s excellence and hotness provides him with a sense of power and purpose, Jeff’s relationship to pornography and sexuality feels more reflexive, an escape he cannot wield with discipline. Interestingly, Jeff was raised by two lesbians who hate pornography. Jeff and his parents make faint efforts to rekindle their relationship, as Jeff’s musical stardom begins to rise. Jeff’s musical allusions flood the novel, providing several playlists worth of listening material that will dizzy anyone unfamiliar with 90s rock. I spent a lot and not enough time looking up songs and listening to the soundscape they provided. Like Pedro, Jeff also violently lashes out against those who betray him. 

The novel is full of sharp observations. Porn scenes have the bawdy, campy language of porn scenes, but manage to do more than simply convey raw masculine lust. The scenes often intersect with challenges in the actors’ personal lives, frequently include complex and/or traumatic dynamics between actors and directors, and trigger devastating and soulful flashbacks. Bruciaga manages to say something heartbreaking and ugly about masculinity through these scenes. Bruciaga conveys brutality with tenderness. 

Pornografia para piromaniacos ends with pessimistic conclusions on masculinity and its toxicities. There is something about Jeff and Pedro’s many rants in the book, however, that give me a sense of hope. If the voices of aging queers continue to be silenced or disappear as times shift and their voices become inconvenient to some, the book provides a space where the voices of some of our queer elders can be heard. They provide some well-argued critiques of contemporary queer culture, even if they as characters fall victim to their own toxicities, ultimately proving themselves wrong. 

I’m on the lookout for more erotic novels this brilliant. Sex undergirds far too much of human life to not read writing about it seriously. I would love to translate it one day… it’d be a dream.  5/5  

Poemas de la izquierda erotica / Ana Maria Rodas / 1973

Poemas de la izquierda erotica / Ana Maria Rodas / 1973

Poemas de la izquierda erotica is considered the beginning of feminist leftist literature in Guatemala. It's a spicy title, but even so, I think I’d be forgiven for expecting a little bit more leftist content or analysis here. The collection includes a mix of poems about erotic desire and agency, both of which are frequently frustrated by dishonesty, rejection, or other unbalanced gendered power dynamics. The poems have Yesika Salgado’s accessibility, line breaks, and flair for unflinching honesty ground through the political upheavals of the Central American armed conflicts of the Cold War. I found the poems thoroughly delightful, though would consider it a nascent feminist literature coming from an era when the bar for men was so low and the asks of women were respectively really damn low too. 4/5

Delta of Venus / Anais Nin / 1977

Delta of Venus / Anais Nin / 1977

I read this book in the dead of night after waking up and not being able to fall asleep. It felt like an appropriate choice for the occasions. In the introduction, Nin describes how Henry James had a patron who paid literati for erotica and a few authors of the period would write for this patron when low on cash. This patron, however, only wanted the mechanical action of sex, the camera up-close on every page, taking all the life and joy and tension out of sex. While I expected a book that read like a strong and spicy old school romance novel, what I actually got was much more enrichening and deep. Nin largely actively counteracts the pornographic reader’s gaze by including short stories with taboo acts, including pedophilia, incest, sexual violence, etc. Nin’s builds tension by portraying the tug and tussle between different characters as they navigate sexuality almost always without much sexual experience or education, a language for consent, or a language for queer gender and sexuality. Some parts of the book are like reading Lolita by Nabokov. Others brought me back to the sexual confusion of my youth, where romance was frequently like trying to participate in a scene where you don’t know what role you play or any of your lines. The stories gave me the language to describe violations and beauty I’ve experienced, sometimes intermixed. I didn’t expect that at all. Nin has made me realize how impoverished much of our erotic scenes in literature are. Even the racism in the book and outdated ideas about gender are fascinating for what they reveal about Nin’s society’s relationship to race and sexuality and how they interact. Only one or so stories included a racist trope that failed to add any literary merit and actively ruined the whole damn short story. I’m glad I read this. 4.5 out of 5

Play For Time / Paula Jane Mendoza / 2020

Play for Time / Paula Jane Mendoza / 2020

Paula Jane Mendoza puts the hip in hypnotic. Play for Time is a collection of poetry brimming with eros, longing, and fire. Think Natalie Diaz’s diction and rhythm tempered with Traci Brimhall’s slow soothing lyric. Typically, I am skeptical of literature with absurdly obscure or “long” words, but Mendoza finds a way to make words like “aphasic,” “maugre,” and “salamandrine” absolutely succulent . That said, you might need your dictionary handle.

The organization of PFT can feel a quizzical if you if you are used to poetry collections with a linear narrative. PFT consciously writes against the linear narrative, opting for a narrative that contorts itself, is more scrambled. The section headers for example are “First,” “So,” “Then,” “Beginning,” and “Middle” with a poem called “Alternate Ending 1” in section “So” and a poem called “The End” in section “Then”—both in the middle of the book. Some poems are glibly titled “Lyric,” “Narrative Poem,” and “Sentimental “Poem,” drawing attention to their genre. Rather than detracting, these titles get fun: 1) “Lyric” sketches seductive imagery, trying to capture the ineffable sensation of eros, both as in love and a lust for life: “I have been wanting to write outside / of thinking…” Mendoza croons, “I’m stupid with spring / and impatient with those / that refuse to burst, too stubborn / to purple such sudden luxury / out the ground.” 2) “Narrative Poem” Rather than a poem that scribes the A-B-C narrative of a heartbreak, this poem centers the poet’s resistance to narrative, the desire to be removed from it. It’s very Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, and even alludes to it in the prose poem. 3) “Sentimental Poem”: God knows too many woman have been called sentimental, but how else do you write a love poem to your long distance partner? I chuckle when the speaker bashfully notes, “If I am being honest, romantic comedies are my jam.”

There is the heartbreak of a Yesika Salgado poem, where the reader throws on a novela, perrea sola, and downs some ice cream to cool the ache. Then, there is the heartbreak of a Paula Mendoza poem, where it feels more like crying in front of the bathroom sink as you try to love yourself enough to brush your teeth and fail. “I / can’t for the line of me extract any more / than I am / tired. I am tired / of myself when I think / of you and nowhere we are / headed towards, the last word / always / the first, again. Again.” If line breaks were wrist locks, readers will be wearing casts for weeks. Her poems pace and punch silence like clothesline to the neck. Take “Engineer,” for example.

Lastly, erotic poetry is notoriously difficult to write without feeling cheap. Mendoza’s erotic poems in this collection must be expensive because they stupefy. Here’s some videos if you don’t believe me. I recommend this book for anyone interested in Filipinx/Pinay literature, Asian literature, poetry, sequencing collections, erotica, feminism, and Utah.

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows by Balli Kaur Jaswa

Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows / Balli Kaur Jaswa / Morrow/HarperCollins / 2017

I picked up Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows per the recommendation of a Chicana gender studies professor I met in passing. I am immensely grateful for her recommendation. Like “Jane, the Virgin,” the novel toys with genre in genius and hilarious ways. Whereas “Jane, the Virgin” plays with the tropes of romantic comedies, romance novels, and telenovela, Erotic Stories for Punjabi Widows plays with tropes of romance novels and—you guessed it—erotica. In doing so, it elevates erotica as a genre and engages in some good old-fashioned postmodern meta-analysis of erotica as a genre.

Before I go further, let me give a plot teaser. Nikki, a feminist law school dropout and British Indian, applies for a job teaching a woman’s writing workshop in Southall, UK’s little Punjab. She is bummed to find out rather than teaching creative writing, she was bait-and-switched into teaching a literacy class for a group made up largely of middle-aged widows. In one of the first few classes, Nikki accidentally leaves behind an erotica novel meant as a gag gift to one of her friends. When she returns to class, she discovers one of the widows reading the stories aloud for the rest of the group. Hilarity and drama ensue.

The workshop format allows for some great commentary on the tropes of erotica. There are hilarious sections where Nikki complains about the widows tendency to compare every phallus to a vegetable. It is fascinating to read the differences between the smutty, tawdry erotica, as created and narrated by the widows, and the steamier bits of the novel written in the elevated and more subtle tone of Jaswa’s narrator. The erotic provides powerful avenues into discussions of intergenerational trauma, gendered violence, femicide, gender relations, and modern vs tradtional lifestyles. It is awe-inspiring to watch Jaswa use erotica of all things to open up these conversations so naturally. There is a great amount of healing had, as Nikki’s writing workshop becomes a space for these women to process their grief and the injustices widows and women sometimes face in traditional Punjabi communities. The women value this opportunity to take pleasure in their stories and articulate their desires so much they are willing to risk the disapproval of powerful members and organizations of their community.

There is a very cinematic quality to the writing. This is at once one of the most fun aspects of the novel and perhaps also its greatest weakness. The dialogue is so witty and on cue, the scenes so snappy and brilliant, you may be too swept up to be annoyed by what may perhaps be a lack of realism. The transformation of Kulwinder, the novel’s antagonist, may happen a little too smoothly, so much so that it feels a bit like a movie. That said, I am immensely surprised this novel hasn’t been turned into a sitcom yet. It’s a goldmine! Someone needs to get on that.

What I might appreciate most about the novel, however, is that while it may draw readers in with a steamy promise of sexual content, a solid chunk of the narrative focuses on violence against women and a femicide in the Southall community. The novel shows a community grappling with the femicide, the power relations between the families involved, and prompts the reader to think of the not-so-uncommon femicides in our lives. If the Missing and Murdered Indigenous Women movement and the #sayhername movement has taught us anything is how widespread and interwoven into the fabric of modernity gendered violence is. The erotica workshops end up empowering the women to use their voices in a way that directly challenges the authority of the patriarchal men in the community and those complicit in the femicide.

I loved this book. I highly recommend it to anyone interested in gender and sexuality studies, feminism, postcolonialism, diaspora, narrative pacing, and postmodernism.

Postcolonial Love Poem by Natalie Diaz

Postcolonial Love Poem / Natalie Diaz / Graywolf Press / 2020

One of my favorite things about Natalie Diaz’s poetry and celebrity is how much it seems to rub some of the older poets I know wrong. One older Native poet, for example, believes When My Brother Was An Aztec was published too soon. According to them, the manuscript felt too much like an MFA thesis—with its trumpeting play and virtuoso with forms, which to them felt like mere exercises. Another older queer poet went out of their way to comment, “[Diaz] isn’t that great” in a way to suggest not that Diaz isn’t good, just that she’s not as amazing as her celebrity would make it seem.

Maybe these poets are right, but I think the things they would fault about Diaz are the precise reasons why I love her work. I love that When My Brother Was An Aztec stunts on em with ghazals, pantoums, and the like. I love that Postcolonial Love Poem feels overwritten, that it makes me reach for the dictionary time and time again for words as thicc as atman, cabochon, lapidary, alarum, mullion, and transom. Perhaps these are things that would make me side-eye other poets, but in Diaz, there is something so deliberate and authoritative about her voice, her political framing of her own work, that makes me fall for her. While it isn’t the primary or sole reason I love Diaz’s work, I confess, part of the reason I like the high-diction of her work is because it probably makes old white people reach for the dictionary.

If you have yet to fall for Natalie Diaz, try Postcolonial Love Poem. As unabashedly erotic and deftly political as its title would imply, the collection includes intensely sexual poems, flooding over with ecstasy (“Like Church,” “Ink-Light”, and “Ode to the Beloved’s Hips” being my favorite), poems about grief, race, her brother’s drug addiction, basketball, and the environment. These poems are all densely related to the body, which—per the seven-page prose poem “The First Water Is the Body”—extends beyond Western notions of arm, leg, leg, arm, head to also conceive of the land and water as equally, if not more important parts of the body.

My favorite line is from the last poem “Grief Work”: “Achilles chased Hektor around the walls / of Ilium three times--: how long must I circle / the high gate / between her hip and knee / to sold the red-gold geometry / of her thigh?” Ugh.

Poems like “Grief Work,” like “Like Church,” like “Postcolonial Love Poem” are as full of grief as they are with love. I don’t feel like I have anything profound to say about them, just that as a grief-bound queer person of color, I am grateful for these love poems that hold the weight of history as tenderly as they do a lover’s waist. I am grateful that these poems can allude to wars lost and never-ending in the same swooping stanza where “we pleasure to hurt, leave marks / the size of stones—each cabochon polished / by our mouths.” (If you’re slow on the uptake there, she’s talking about leaving hickies.)

Postcolonial Love Poem is a must-read on your syllabus about feminism, ethnic studies, and environmentalism. Or if you’re simply looking for a hot piece of erotica to get you through the quarantine.