Brown Neon

A meditation on southwestern terrains, intergenerational queer dynamics, and surveilled brown artists that crosses physical and conceptual borders.

Part butch memoir, part ekphrastic travel diary, part queer family tree, Raquel Gutiérrez’s debut essay collection, Brown Neon, gleans insight from the sediment of land and relationships. For Gutiérrez, terrain is essential to understanding that no story, no matter how personal, is separate from the space where it unfolds. 

Whether contemplating the value of adobe as both vernacular architecture and commodified art object, highlighting the feminist wounding and transphobic apparitions haunting the multigenerational lesbian social fabric, or recalling a failed romance, Gutiérrez traverses complex questions of gender, class, identity, and citizenship with curiosity and nuance.

©2022 Raquel Gutierrez (P)2022 Recorded Books

Not my taste.

As I progressed through this book I found myself consistently asking, "Who is the target audience for this book?" I believe there may not be one. This author seems to like to talk and tell "her story." However, I didn't not find anything that she had to say particularly interesting. Her persistent cynicism did not help. For my taste, a better medium for this author would be slam poetry.