Algarabía
The Song of Cenex, Natural Son of the Isle Alarabíyya / La canción de Cenex, hijo natural de la Ínsula Alarabíyya
by Roque Raquel Salas Rivera
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Pub Date Sep 02 2025 | Archive Date Aug 31 2025
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Description
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.
Advance Praise
“Algarabía is both salve and triumph. Roque Raquel Salas Rivera cultivates an epic universe that subverts the canon to embrace a trans sanctuary of cosmologies, myths, yearning, humor, and joy. . . . He is a necessary voice for today, tomorrow, and the days that must still be imagined.”—Anthony Cody
“In Algarabía, Salas Rivera dances between abstract wordplay and character-driven epic narrative and ensures that every line sizzles your synapses with the urgent delights and betrayals of the trans fight for existence. . . . These stanzas feel like getting free.”—Dr. Sasha Costanza-Chock
“A poetics that is not only epic, but speculative, a praise that hacks the system, a transtemporal escape where trans bodies reap the journey of those who paved the way. Algarabía is an invitation to fugue's faggotry, where pleasure and movement outshine patriotic and heroic discourse.”—Yuliana Ortiz Ruano
“Algarabía is epic, it is mythic, it is choral, it is song and story; it is a living poem that explores . . . the forms and traditions that we have inherited from this orphaned modernity so that we might narrate and poeticize individual and collective life. . . . Algarabía is a watershed, an occurrence.”—Sergio Gutiérrez Negrón
Marketing Plan
National publicity campaign
Bookseller outreach
Library and academic marketing
Author events in New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and more
Targeted digital advertising
Social media promotion
National publicity campaign
Bookseller outreach
Library and academic marketing
Author events in New York, Chicago, Seattle, San Francisco, and more
Targeted digital advertising
Social media promotion
Available Editions
EDITION | Paperback |
ISBN | 9781644453513 |
PRICE | $25.00 (USD) |
PAGES | 448 |