GLR March-April 2023

with the connections between those traditions. Amid these three focused essays is the pointedly titled “Do I Love SanAnto?” which approaches a much broader subject (San Antonio, with its strange mix of intensely patriotic kitsch and extremely cool, queer spaces) with the same atten tion to detail. Taken as a whole, Brown Neon shines a light on identi ties, experiences, and art

Of Art, Borders, & Identity

R UTH J OFFRE

BROWN NEON: Essays by Raquel Gutiérrez Coffee House Press. 232 pages, $16.95 R neys across the southwestern U.S. in perpetual search of love, art, and community. It’s also a critique of the ways in which La tinidad (in particular, queer Latinidad) is represented in the art world, which can feel baffling and insular. The book examines what it means to be butch in a world that would just as soon leave the queer community behind. Its triadic structure further emphasizes its multiple interconnected subjects, breaking the collection up into three sections headed “Llorando Por Tu Amor,” “Difficult Terrains,” and “La Mano Obra.” The first section begins with an intimate portrait of the au thor’s relationship with the late Jeanne Córdova, the author for whom Lambda Literary’s eponymous Jeanne Córdova Prize for Lesbian/Queer Nonfiction is named. An essay titled “On Mak ing Butch Family” reflects not only on the death of Córdova, whom the author affectionately refers to as “Big Poppa,” but also on the continued importance of a distinct butch identity within the queer community. An essay titled “A Butch in the Desert” sees the author and loved ones contend with the loss of Córdova, performing rituals of grief and remembrance upon her passing. A third essay opens with a scene at an adobe shrine out side a café and becomes a meditation on the arduous process of making adobe bricks as a proxy for the similarly arduous process of working through a difficult, passionate relationship. In the next section, Gutiérrez looks toward the border, where art cannot be separated from the politics of identity, immigra tion, and human rights. In “Do Migrants Dream of Blue Bar rels?” the author rides along on a humanitarian effort to refill water stations in the Texas desert for the migrants crossing the border on foot. “Behind the Barrier: Resisting the Border Wall Prototypes as Land Art” further examines the troubling visuals of the border and the even more problematic attempts to turn those visuals into hollow performance art. From there, the author goes back to the gallery space, examining the complex politics of representation and the damage of grifting and misrepresenta tion. Together, these three essays provide a political and ethical context for understanding the author’s own position in the art world and the complexities of the art world itself. In the final section, Gutiérrez focuses her critical acuity on the works of individual artists. They include the late Laura Aguilar, a photographer who chronicled life as a fat lesbian in California; Shizu Saldamando, a portrait artist who captured the likenesses of an underground and often queer community; and Sebastian Hernández, a performance artist who brought together Latinx and indigenous traditions and forced audiences to reckon AQUEL GUTIÉRREZ’ debut essay collection, Brown Neon , explores queer identity and the art that evolves from it. The book is a travelogue of the author’s jour

Raquel Gutiérrez. Author’s website.

works not often explored in the realm of creative nonfiction. In this way, the collection feels wholly original even though it’s firmly rooted in the social and historical context that the author is seeking to explore. The result is an impressive group of essays that display a mixture of aching vulnerability, hard-earned ex pertise, and exquisite prose. ____________________________________________________ Ruth Joffre is the author of the short story collection Night Beast .

The Great ‘Why Not?’

T ERRI S CHLICHENMEYER

MAD HONEY: A Novel by Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan Ballantine Books. 464 pages, $29.99 I F you’ve been following the buzz on this book, you may wonder how Jodi Picoult and Jennifer Finney Boylan—two very different kinds of authors—decided to team up on a novel. As the story goes, Boylan dreamed that she’d written a book with Picoult, and she tweeted about it. Picoult saw the tweet and said some version of “Why not?” This is an important fact to know when you pick up Mad Honey . There’s a larger reason for the presence and contribution of both authors, and it lies within the story. In the novel, Olivia McAfee is a woman who grew up in New England, moved away when she married, and ran back after escaping from her abusive husband in the middle of the night. For now, her income derives mostly from a series of beehives that she inherited from her father, and the honey from her “livestock.” This thread is mostly peripheral to the story but for a reference later in this novel. Olivia is the mother of eighteen-year-old Asher, a senior in high school who’s the captain of the hockey team and the dream of all the teenage girls in their small town. Asher is a moody boy, deliberate in his actions and kind to underdogs, but not an indiscriminate player or young ladies’ man. Instead of playing the field during his last year of school, he chooses a reticent girl who just moved to town with her mother. Lily Campanello is nineteen, and she and her mother have likewise escaped an

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