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The Queer Issue XI

June 2020

June-2020-Queer-IX-Nilbar-Gures-Rose-of-Sapatao
Rose of Sapatão, 2014. Produced for the 31st São Paulo Biennal with the support of SAHA. Photo by CHROMA Istanbul. Courtesy of Galerist Istanbul.

Image: Nilbar Güreş, Rose of Sapatão, 2014. Produced for the 31st São Paulo Biennal with the support of SAHA. Photo by CHROMA Istanbul. Courtesy of Galerist Istanbul.


Welcome to our eleventh annual Queer issue. At this time of crisis, grief, and rage, we present six queer narratives of characters fighting for identity and recognition. Turkish writer Nazli Karabiyikoglu offers a harrowing tale of exorcism and defiance. In two tales of self-transformation, Brazilian journalist Chico Felitti reports on a couple obsessed with facial modification, and Filipino fiction writer R. Joseph Dazo finds a young man who channels heartbreak into body art. Peru’s Juan Carlos Cortázar eavesdrops on a thwarted attempt to fulfill a lover’s dying wish. Chilean graphic novelist Gabriel Ebensperger draws a boy’s growing realization of not fitting in. And Russia’s Natalia Rubanova sets a romantic triangle to Schubert.

The Right to Identity: The Queer Issue
By Susan Harris
The characters in the works presented here demand recognition of the full spectrum of Queer experience in often hostile environments.
Elfiye
By Nazlı Karabıyıkoğlu
They looked at me like I was sick.
Translated from Turkish by Ralph Hubbell
The Man with a Thousand Names
By R. Joseph Dazo
Aren’t you the one with the tattoos?
Translated from Cebuano by John Bengan
Multilingual
Ricardo and Vânia
By Chico Felitti
She can’t count how many times she had silicone applied to her body.
Translated from Portuguese by Flora Thomson-DeVeaux
Eight Meters
By Juan Carlos Cortázar
The señora is not going to back down.
Translated from Spanish by Jennifer Shyue
Six Musical Moments by Schubert
By Natalia Rubanova
She smelled of Schubert.
Translated from Russian by Rachael Daum
Gay Giant
By Gabriel Ebensperger
Have you ever had the feeling that even if you wanted to, you’d never blend in?
Translated by Kelley D. Salas