Fiebre Tropical
Books | Fiction / Hispanic & Latino
3.8
Julián Delgado Lopera
Winner for the 2021 Lambda Literary Award for Lesbian Fiction Winner of the 2021 Ferro-Grumley Literary Award for LGBTQ Fiction Finalist for the 2020 Kirkus Prize for Fiction Lit by the hormonal neon glow of Miami, this debut novel follows a Colombian teenager's coming-of-age as she plunges headfirst into lust and evangelism. Uprooted from her comfortable life in Bogotá, Colombia, into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, fifteen-year-old Francisca is miserable and friendless in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up into an evangelical church, replete with Christian salsa, abstinent young dancers, and baptisms for the dead. But there, Francisca also meets the magnetic Carmen: opinionated and charismatic, head of the youth group, and the pastor’s daughter. As her mother’s mental health deteriorates and her grandmother descends into alcoholism, Francisca falls more and more intensely in love with Carmen. To get closer to her, Francisca turns to Jesus to be saved, even as their relationship hurtles toward a shattering conclusion. “Ebullient and assertive.” —New York Times "Julián Delgado Lopera—remember that name—is an irreverent, shameless and disarming new novelist. They are a merciless satirist in control of a pitch-perfect voice that makes an indisputable case for Spanglish as the perfect vehicle to express what we are really like right now." —NBC News
AD
Buy now:
More Details:
Author
Julián Delgado Lopera
Pages
283
Publisher
Feminist Press at CUNY
Published Date
2020-03-03
ISBN
1936932768 9781936932764
Community ReviewsSee all
"I was assigned to read this book in my Gender and the negotiation of difference course. I loved this book so ******* much! It took a few years to read but Francisca is such a well written character! Her actions are driven by her desire to be validated by this girl she likes. She has a whole life where her mom is trying to get her to love Jesus and she has a grandmother who is just as gay as she is! She spends the entire first half of the book trying to get into Carmen’s pants. She has 2 moments of intimacy with Carmen and the rest is all pining. Then Carmen gets sent away to a mission in Bogotá and we come back to the main story and Francisca is dating someone who is into the same exact person she is. It’s messy. I like the moment where she meets Andrea, because Francisca is a baby queer and Andrea is only a few years older but she has experience with girlfriends, so she becomes Francisca’s voice of reason. It’s a bittersweet ending but the moment I love is when andrea is comforting Francisca at the end because it’s so intimate but not sexual at all! It’s so good!!!"
Finn Hughes
"The author’s writing is incredible, and Francisca is a wonderfully developed character. I was admittedly intimidated by the Spanglish throughout, as I know next to 0 Spanish, but usually there’s plenty of context to get the meaning."
G
Grace