After the success of Lo que hay and La seducción, Sara Torres returns with an essay that seeks a way to think beyond heterosexual binarism, an exploration of pleasure that moves away from an identity fantasy based on a battle between opposites.
“A goddess. [...] One of the most unique and radical voices in contemporary Spanish literature.”
Alana S. Portero
“Lovers are the bodies that smile before eating, that look into the eyes before kissing. Their drive is oriented toward intersubjective encounter, and therefore exists in the ethical dimension. Loving bodies desire to overthrow the racializing and patriarchal heterosexual system because they want to erase in the other’s gaze the ghost of violence experienced before the encounter between loving bodies. The loving bodies, subjects of this book, long for the joy of those they love and are frustrated by the legacy of a symbolic world that assaults and limits their capacity for attention. Because they smile before eating and look into the eyes before kissing, they do not desire the other’s masquerade, they find no rest in the rehearsed and complacent joy of gender, they yearn for encounter through a hope for truer communication. Because their drive exists in the ethical dimension, because it is practiced in the intersubjective, loving bodies, above all, will wish they have loved well.”
Confirmed as one of the great revelations of contemporary Spanish literature with Lo que hay and La seducción, Sara Torres signs an essay that seeks a way to think beyond heterosexual binarism. With the purpose of slimming down the images and ideas that initiate us into the human culture of the body and sexuality in the West, the author seeks joyful practices that progressively move away from what she calls the “hetero-real fantasy,” an identity fantasy based on a battle between opposites.
“Eros, the archer, tenses her body and in that tension, initiates the sexual. She is about to put herself at risk: it is not a risk of death, as heterosexual epic sings, but of sweetness.”
“Her language is absolutely magnificent. Sara Torres has such a unique, diamond-like voice... and I love that writing. She carves thoughts, images. It has been almost like a book that is heard when read.”
Rosa Montero
“A goddess. [...] One of the most unique and radical voices in contemporary Spanish literature.”
Alana S. Portero
“Sara Torres moves vitally [...] with a natural sexual explicitness that includes the fantasy and materiality of a silky, concentrated erotism without posturing but with intense literary elaboration.”
Jordi Gracia, Babelia
“[Sara Torres] has become a mass phenomenon thanks to ingredients no one would imagine: gender theory, tenderness, and lots of lesbianism. […] A reference model for those who come and for all who will come.”
Alexandra Lores, Vogue
“Sara Torres writes with that mix of delicacy, lucidity, and tenderness of someone who knows that life and those who inhabit it are drawn with very fine strokes, infinite nuances of bodies that love, desire, suffer, and embody all kinds of contradictions.”
Carolina Freire Vales, ELLE
“ALSA connects all people in love and Sara Torres is this for me, she is the ALSA of lesbians. It is a revolutionary cry.”
Eugenia Tenenbaum
