Skylit: Fiebre Tropical by Juli Delgado Lopera, with Michelle Tea

Jul
1:30am
Skylit: Fiebre Tropical by Juli Delgado Lopera, with Michelle Tea

By Skylight Books
Fiebre Tropical (Amethyst Editions)
Order your copy here
Uprooted from Bogotá into an ant-infested Miami townhouse, fifteen-year-old Francisca is miserable in her strange new city. Her alienation grows when her mother is swept up in an evangelical church, replete with abstinent salsa dancers and baptisms for the dead.
But there, Francisca meets the magnetic Carmen: head of the youth group and the pastor's daughter. As her mother's mental health deteriorates, Francisca falls for Carmen and is saved to grow closer with her, even as their relationship hurtles toward a shattering conclusion.
Praise for Fiebre Tropical
"When you drive around town, when you stare out the window, when you wake up in the middle of the night, whether you know it or not, you are waiting for a book like this. This book is a triumph, and we're all triumphant in its presence." --Daniel Handler, author of All the Dirty Parts
"Fiebre Tropical is a story of migration, queerness, brokenness, and love. Juli Delgado Lopera has written a novel across borders that buzzes with verve, fierceness, and raw emotion. Delgado Lopera forks their tongue for this book, weaving English and Spanish in inspired and irreverent prose. This book is absolute music to my ears." --Ingrid Rojas Contreras, author of Fruit of the Drunken Tree
"Juli Delgado Lopera's riveting new book is propelled as much by its hurricane-force language as by its unforgettable characters, storm-tossed women making the best of their new lives in a new country. This queer coming-of-age novel explores first love, but it also looks at the myriad ways humans find solace and connection." --Caroline Paul, author of You Are Mighty: A Guide to Changing the World
"Fiebre Tropical is a literary explosion filled with sweaty Jesus-crazed teens, fainting churchgoers, powerful, melodramatic mothers, and drunken grandmothers. In a rollicking, multilingual prose both wise and irreverent, brimming with snark and queer humor, Juli Delgado Lopez crafts a migration tale we've never read and badly need." --Michelle Tea, author of Against Memoir: Complaints, Confessions & Criticisms
"A magnificent novel, by turns electric, hilarious, sexy, thrilling, wrenching, and profound. Pa decirlo clarito: Juli Delgado Lopera is a writer of explosive talent, and this book is a fierce and radiant contribution, yes, to queer literature, Latinx literature, and immigrant literature, but also to literature, punto." --Carolina De Robertis, author of Cantoras
"Gorgeously written, tragic and hilarious by turns, Fiebre Tropical is the tale of a teenager from Bogotá coming to the United States and coming of age. But more than that, it's about a crumbling family of matriarchs gone crazy for religion, and the soul-saving, soul-crushing power of first love. Juli Delgado Lopera's voice prickles with tears, outrage, and sharp details that make us believe in their characters, and more importantly, to believe in their survival." --Annalee Newitz, author of Autonomous
"¡Ay Dios mío! This book's got tumbao. With energetic prose and a sharp sense of humor, Juli Delgado Lopera brings us a queer coming-of-age tale that explores diasporic identity from Bogotá to Miami, and the complicated ways that religious fervor impacts same-sex desire and one's relationship to community. Lopera's eye for detail is fierce and this book is easy to devour." --Joseph Cassara, author of The House of Impossible Beauties
Juli Delgado Lopera is an award-winning Colombian writer and historian based in San Francisco. They are the author of Quiéreme (Nomadic Press 2017) and the illustrated, bilingual oral history collection ¡Cuéntamelo! (Aunt Lute Books 2017), which won a 2018 Lambda Literary Award and a 2018 Independent Publisher Book Award. They are the recipient of the 2014 Jackson Literary Award, and have received fellowships from the Brush Creek Foundation of the Arts, Lambda Literary Foundation, Yerba Buena Center for the Arts, The SF Grotto, and an individual artist grant from the SF Arts Commission. Juli's work has been nominated for a Pushcart Prize and has appeared in Eleven Eleven, Foglifter, Four Way Review, Broadly, and TimeOut Mag, among others. Formerly, Juli served as the creative director of RADAR Productions, a queer literary nonprofit in San Francisco.
michelle tea is the author of the young adult novels Mermaid in Chelsea Creek and Girl at the Bottom of the Sea, as well as numerous books for grown-ups. She lives in Los Angeles, where she reads tarot cards, casts spells, and talks to birds.
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