Author Anne E. Terpstra recommends Cantoras by Carolina De Robertis
Welcome to Authors Getting Rec’d! Each week, we’ll bring you a new sapphic book recommendation from a favorite sapphic author. Find out what authors are reading and why, plus read about the personal connections between authors and books.
This week, Anne E. Terpstra explains why Cantoras is a must read.
Anne was looking for a new book to read and asked a friend who writes (and reads) a lot of historical fiction, like we all do! And gosh was she glad to have this one recommended. Anne loves books that tackle a time and/or place she’s not familiar with, especially when it comes to queer communities, and this book has it in spades. It’s her first of Carolina’s books she’s ever read!
Let’s hear more from Anne about why Cantoras is a must read:
This novel follows a group of queer Latina women living under an oppressive Uruguayan dictatorship, and although that sounds like the setup for a dark, challenging read, this book was filled with a lot of joy and hope. Although it begins in the 1970s, the book moves forward through three decades. Watching these characters grow, mature, and change was one of my favorite things about this novel – I love older characters in stories.
There is heartache and fear, of course, both from their challenging political environment and fraught family ties, but there is so much friendship, love, and self-discovery in both their individual journeys and their evolving relationships. The author does a wonderful job portraying the world around these women, but she also beautifully writes about the world the women create for themselves.
‘Found family’ may be a more modern term, but this book is just one example of how queer women have been creating family throughout history. This isn’t a romance, but it is a wonderful exploration of female community in a time period and setting many readers of historical fiction won’t have encountered before.
