Cantoras

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The political landscape is woven into their lives and I found myself being educated with little effort.

It’s so rustic, in fact, that they don’t have accommodations, and when they find a place to rest, it’s an old fishing hut. What I loved most about this story is the fact that Flaca, Romina, La Venus, Paz and Malena had a persistent desire to take up space and create a sanctuary for themselves in the midst of a broken nation where their safety couldn’t be guaranteed even if they obeyed all the laws.Over thirty-five years pass in this manner, and during that time friendships are tested, romantic love is tested, as each woman seeks her own identity and happiness in a world where it’s not safe to be a “cantora,” a woman who sings, a woman who loves other women but cannot feel safe in doing so. Given family (biologic, usually) versus created or chosen family, the idea of “shared ancestors”, the need to hide who you are - all very interesting and important, especially for gay people living in such dangerous times. Certain events felt like someone was twisting a knife through my heart; I had no idea that I would ever be able to experience pain like that from a piece of fiction.

With the above said, this book is deep, sad, frightening, loving, happy, infuriating and a host of other emotions. Beyond all else, the book is an ode to the enduring power of loving strongly and without boundaries. They meet by chance, tentatively trusting signals that they are safe with each other, and through Flaca they discover the secluded oceanside village of Cabo Polonia where they retreat from the oppression of the military dictatorship that flattens their city of Montevideo into a drab shadow.Cantoras is a self-assured masterpiece that despite its anxious moments proceeds at the unworried pace of a leisurely seaside stroll. It was wonderful to hear how the words were spoken, how the author sounded out the rhythm in the sentences, and how the cantoras banter back and forth. I’m left with an ache in my chest that, given the choice, I would choose again just to experience the beauty of this novel. And throughout, again and again, the women will be tested by their families, lovers, society, and one another as they fight to live authentic lives. The dunes rippled out around them, a spare landscape, the landscape of another planet, as if in leaving Montevideo they’d also managed to leave Earth, like that rocket that some years ago had taken men to the moon, only they were not men, and this was not the moon, it was something else, they were something else, uncharted by astronomers.

Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis is a poignant queer historical and political fiction novel set in Uruguay. Set in the late 70’s, five women bond over needing to escape the Uruguayan dictatorship, with the strict rules of the city, they decide to head to an isolated coastal town, a place with no electricity or running water with barely any walls a place of “no toilets and no telephones and no husbands” a place they can be free to be completely themselves. Think about Malena’s assigned number in the clinic, the renaming of Anita (La Venus), and the end of the novel when the women discuss the variety of names they now have to describe their sexualities.

Pointedly relevant to our own dangerous era, Carolina De Robertis has gifted us a majestic work of song and imagination, a handbook to survival for us all. While they do not have an easy life and there is much struggle, most of this book didn't have the feeling of overwhelming queer suffering that often goes along with these narratives.