Highly fascinating description and cover but sadly I was unable to access the book as it does not have a kindle version. Would love to review it for my blog www.bookbaboons.wordpress.com

Thank you to University of Toronto and NetGalley for the Advanced Reader's Copy!

Available August 18th 2020

Based in the sultry city of Natal, Brazil, Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan's ethnographic story "Gringo Love" poses questions about power dynamics in policing sex work. Why is it that women from favelas are labelled as criminals for doing exactly what college women in upper middle class neighborhoods do? How does sex work provide a means of upward mobility? Who is "protected" when sex workers rights are violated?

Through simple yet illustrative dialogue, Carrier-Moisan brings to life the story of Carol and her friends, women who make their living by providing services for the wealthy foreigners. It's particularly interesting to juxtapose the women's view of themselves as workers who are aiming for a better future for themselves and their children & their client's view of the women as sexy, submissive ladies they are supporting and keeping safe from "brutal" native men. In a way, the foreigners are coming to Natal to fulfill colonial fantasies.

There are moments in this book that will make you flinch, moments that will make you disgusted and moments that will leave you indescribably sad. There are also moments of levity, of sisterly compassion, of clarity. The graphic form was engaging and enjoyable & the essays in the appendix help contextualize and tie the story together. I would highly recommend!!

Subtitled "Stories of Sex Tourism in Brazil" this was written by William Flynn and illustrated by Débora Santos, and based on the research of Marie-Eve Carrier-Moisan. Published by the University of Toronto Press, this was a look at the delicate politics of 'women of the night' in city of Natal in northeast Brazil, who interact with European tourists in interesting ways that lie all around the blurry line of outright prostitution.

The book was based on real people and interviews the researcher had done with them, and although it was a graphic novel it actually wasn't graphic in a sexual sense; it merely depicted the kind of lives these women led and their aims and dreams. Is it worth noting that this did not pass the Bechdel-Wallace test when the aim of the book was expressly to discuss sex tourism? It's hardly a surprise that it failed, but I have to say that it would have been nice to have learned more about what these women aimed to get out of these relationships. It was touched on but only, it seemed, in passing.

The story is supported by extensive notes and references and contained a glossary of the Brazilian terms used by people in this life. The author of the story visited twice, one in the mid-oughts, and then more recently about six years ago, and the changes were marked. She couldn't even find many of the women who she'd talked to originally since they'd moved on or moved away.

The relationship between the sex tourists and the local women was an intricate dance and not all women viewed it in the same way or pursued it with the same steps and rhythms. There is a constant beat though, and that is the desire and need to escape the poverty trap far too many of these women are born into. Selling sex, or more reservedly, entering into a mutually profitable relationship with the male visitors wherein the guys get sex with able and attractive women and the women receive money or gifts in return, is a way these women have of raising themselves up.

Some of them look toward marrying a visitor, others look to saving money and getting a college education, and changing their life that way. But constantly in the background was the desire of some locals - mostly the ones who live in the alto district as opposed to the girls, who live in the Ville ghettos - to stamp out the sex tourism. The problem is that the protestors seemed to pursue this not only hypocritically, but mindlessly. They had no plan as to how to help the impoverished women once their rewards from their own enterprising endeavors petered out. This is why these protests are ultimately doomed to fail in my opinion.

This was a fascinating study and a novel representation of the results, and I enjoyed it thoroughly, even while feeling depressed that once again, we're seeing economic disparity causing serious problems that are not being intelligently addressed. I commend this as a worthy read.

*Thank you Netgalley and the Publisher for providing me with an early copy of this book for review, all opinions are my own*

I'm Brazilian and I think that's why I got interested in this story.
This was a study so I will not judge the truth of the facts, but how they were presented, which was in a graphic novel style which in my opinion was not a good way to present this story.
It made the story shallow, it did not give depth to the characters and made the discussion much less interesting than it could have been done.
In the end, I didn't like it, I know it is a very important and relevant subject to be discussed, but I don't think this story in this format did a good job.
I also didn't like the traces of the drawings or how some words were put in Portuguese, I think they could have written everything in English or Portuguese (besides some translations were not very accurate).
So I think in the end I do not recommend it, there is nothing good in this story in my opinion.

Thank you netgalley for providing this ARC in exchange for an honest review.
Interesting way of presenting a social issue through a graphic novel. I thought the conversations felt realistic but the sketches could been sharper. Their faces seemed unclear and not a true illustration of what these Brazilian women looked like. I also thought that this novel didn't really get down to heart of the matter as to why Brazilian women entertain male tourist. In cases where it seems pretty clear the character is exchanging sex for money, her reaction of the exchange is to justify it by saying the guy wanted to help. The novel made the argument too ambiguous. I understand the fear of slut shaming but there has to be a fine line between accepting gifts and money after sex and a real shot at a relationship.