Algarabía. The Song of Cenex, Natural Son of the Isle Alarabíyya / La canción de Cenex, hijo natural de la Ínsula Alarabíyya - Roque Raquel Salas Rivera

A Puerto Rican trans epic that blends poetic play and speculative fiction, by a Lambda Literary Award winner

Algarabía follows Cenex, a trans being who narrates his life while navigating the stories told on his behalf. An inhabitant of a colony of Earth in a parallel universe, Cenex leads us through his years as an experimental subject, a stay in suburbia, and not-so-far-off lands as he struggles to find a name, a body, and a stable home. His song clashes variegated sources with work by cis writers on trans figures, referencing everything from Clueless to Taino cosmology within a single line.

Algarabía inscribes an origin narrative for trans people in the face of their erasure from colonial and anti-colonial literary canons, laughing at its own survival with sharp, unserious rage.


Una epopeya puertorriqueña trans que mezcla poesía y narrativa especulativa, por un ganador del Premio Lambda

Algarabía sigue a Cenex, un ser trans que narra su vida retrospectivamente mientras navega por las historias contadas en su nombre. Habitante de una colonia de la Tierra en un universo paralelo, Cenex nos conduce a través de sus años como sujeto experimental, una estancia suburbana, unas tierras no tan lejanas y su lucha por encontrar un cuerpo y un hogar estables. Su canto enfrenta textos de escritores cis sobre figuras trans con una variedad de fuentes, haciendo referencia a Clueless y a la cosmología taína dentro de un mismo verso.

Algarabía inscribe un mito fundacional para las personas trans frente a su exclusión de los cánones literarios coloniales y anticoloniales y se ríe de su propia supervivencia con una rabia pícara y aguda.

A Puerto Rican trans epic that blends poetic play and speculative fiction, by a Lambda Literary Award winner

Una epopeya puertorriqueña trans que mezcla poesía y narrativa especulativa, por un ganador del Premio Lambda

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera is a Puerto Rican poet and translator. The 2018 Poet Laureate of Philadelphia, he has received a Premio Nuevas Voces, a Juan Felipe Herrera Award, a Lambda Literary Award, and the inaugural Ambroggio Prize.

Roque Raquel Salas Rivera es un poeta y traductor puertorriqueño. El Poeta Laureado de Filadelfia del 2018, ha recibido los premios Nuevas Voces, Juan Felipe Herrera, Lambda, y el premio Ambroggio inaugural.

“In the era of labyrinths, binary delusions, erasures, and ­harms, Algarabía is both salve and triumph. Roque Raquel Salas Rivera cultivates an epic universe, in every sense of the poetic tradition, while subverting the canon to embrace an expansive trans sanctuary of cosmologies, myths, yearning, humor, and joy. This collection is a sigil and atlas that calls out into the abyss a ‘canto of unwavering tenderness in the face of our extermination.’ Salas Rivera gathers a chorus to fashion a trans haven to affirm Algarabía as ‘a revolution as wild and communal as language,’ a language that Salas Rivera dexterously assembles to remind readers that he is one of the most vital voices for today, tomorrow, and the days that must still be imagined.”—Anthony Cody, author of Borderland Apocrypha

“Algarabía is a gift. Salas Rivera dances along an invisible line between abstract wordplay and character-driven epic narrative, makes it look easy, and ensures that every line sizzles your synapses with the urgent delights and betrayals of the trans fight for existence. Along the way, he keeps coining new word combinations that straddle the fabulous chasm between ‘What did I just read?’ and ‘This is what I’ve always felt!’ Thick blocks of muscular text, shimmering lists of half-invented names that terminate with a political punchline, a litany of resistance, an intimate inversion, poems within poems within the story of a journey of self-discovery, all narrated with sparse precision. This is the trans epic poem that you didn’t know you needed until you’re wrapped in stanzas that feel like getting free.”—Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock, author of Design Justice: Community-Led Practices to Build the Worlds We Need