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!!

*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.