Description
About the Book
Vero has always felt at odds with his community. As a trans man in near-future Puerto Rico, he struggles to gain acceptance for his identity and his vision of an inclusive society. After a hurricane decimates the island and Puerto Rico is abandoned by the United States, Vero leaves his home to petition the centralized government for aid and seek the truth about new colonists arriving on the island. But in the Yucatan, Vero finds a landscape ravaged by an ecological disaster of humanity’s own making—the Hydrophage, a climate technology warped into a weapon of war and released onto the land by the dictator Caudillo. Amidst the destruction, Vero finds both desperation and hope for regrowth as he documents the lives of the survivors. Details about the colonists’ intentions emerge when Vero meets the Loba Roja, an anti-Caudillo revolutionary who imagines the renewed power of the Maya. Intrigued by her vision of the future and her unapologetic violence, Vero is faced with life-changing questions: can an Indigenous resurgence protect his beloved island? And what must he sacrifice to support it?
About the Author
E.G. Condé is an anthropologist of technology and an emerging speculative fiction writer of the Puerto Rican diaspora. His short fiction appears in If There’s Anyone Left, Reckoning, EASST Review, Tree and Stone, Sword & Sorcery, and Solarpunk Magazine. Stay connected to his writing at www.egconde.com or follow him on social media via @CloudAnthro.
Learn More
- Read an excerpt at Somos En Escrito
- Read interviews with the author at InterZone Digital and Dragonfly.eco
- Read a review and analysis at The LA Review of Books
Also Available From:
- Bookshop.org
- Weightless Books (for DRM-free ebooks)
- Barnes and Noble
- Waterstones
- Blackwell’s
- Amazon.com, Amazon.ca, Amazon.co.uk, Amazon.com.au (etc.)
Camille Jones –
Sordidez is a bold challenge to the status quo. A story that centers those being oppressed and taken advantage of by the colonial global powers. The cast of all-Latinx characters are powerful and inspiring while also being painfully human. In a novella that I wanted to be an epic, Condé weaves a complex tapestry of people struggling for autonomy and self-determination in a world that sees their countries as pawns, and individuals as statistics.
I appreciated the representation of disabled and deaf characters living in a community that considers them by building ramps after a natural disaster destroys the roads and sidewalks, learning sign language, and learning multiple languages to accommodate those who never learned Spanish. I am particularly impressed by the way the author places diversity into the themes and narrative instead of shoehorning it in.
And the themes are indeed uplifting and inspiring. Despite the challenges the characters face and all the odds that are stacked against them, they persevere and, most importantly, show us a different way to move forward into the future.