Cantoras

The Resource Cantoras
Label
Cantoras
Statement of responsibility
by Carolina De Robertis
Creator
Author
Subject
Genre
Language
eng
Summary
"From the highly acclaimed, award-winning author of The Gods of Tango, a revolutionary new novel about five wildly different women who, in the midst of the Uruguayan dictatorship, find each other as lovers, friends, and ultimately, family. In 1977 Uruguay, a military government has crushed political dissent with ruthless force. In an environment where citizens are kidnapped, raped, and tortured, homosexuality is a dangerous transgression. And yet, despite such societal realities, Romina, Flaca, Anita "La Venus," Paz, and Malena--five cantoras, women who "sing"--somehow, miraculously, find each other and discover an isolated cape, Cabo Polonio, inhabited by just a lonely lighthouse keeper and a few rugged seal hunters. They claim this place as their secret sanctuary. Over the next 35 years, their lives move back and forth between Cabo Polonio and Montevideo, the city they call home, as they return, sometimes together, sometimes in pairs, with lovers in tow, or alone. Throughout it all, the women will be tested repeatedly--by their families, lovers, society, and each other--as they fight to live authentic lives. A genre-defining novel and De Robertis's masterpiece, Cantoras is a breathtaking portrait of queer love, community, forgotten history, and the strength of the human spirit. De Robertis has written a novel that is at once timeless and groundbreaking--a tale about the fire in all our souls and those who make it burn"--
Storyline
Tone
Writing style
Character
Award
Stonewall Book Award for the Barbara Gittings Literature Award, 2020.
Review
  • “Cantoras” is the Spanish word for singers. In her luminous new novel, however, de Robertis’ (The Gods of Tango, 2015) uses it to refer to the five queer women in Uruguay who form the heart and soul of the story, singers in the sense that they remain true to themselves and “sing” in the way they choose to live their lives. In the early 1930s, the government had declared homosexual activity legal, but now, decades later, a coup and subsequent military dictatorship has led to punishment and even death for those who defy the norms. Somehow these women manage not only to survive but to thrive under hostile conditions. De Robertis tells their stories with heart and compassion as the women move back and forth between the city of Montevideo and the hamlet of Cabo Polonio. These five vibrant yet very different women are open to new experiences and unafraid to choose their own reality as they struggle with notions of family, friendship, and love while living under the shadow of despotism. A literary ode to difference. -- June Sawyers (Reviewed 8/1/2019) (Booklist, vol 115, number 22, p19)
  • This sensuous tale from De Robertis (The Gods of Tango) takes readers to the author’s native Uruguay during the 1970s to follow the harrowing lives of five women living under dictatorship. Bonded as cantoras, or “women who sing” (a coded term for lesbians at the time), Flaca, Romina, Anita, Malena, and Paz escape the oppression of their country’s new regime and enjoy freedom at Cabos Polonio, a little known beach. Flaca is a risk taker who bucks tradition; Paz, a 16-year-old romantic just discovering who she is; Romina, a revolutionary who continues to fight despite punishment; Malena, a mysterious one hiding a dark past; and Anita, a beautiful housewife with dreams beyond her marriage. Back home in Montevideo, people disappear and women are raped, but in Polonio, relationships and romance flourish. Over the course of 35 years, these friends and lovers form a makeshift family as they struggle to find their place and awake to their true desires. After the dissolution of the civic-military dictatorship in 1985, formerly forbidden romances are allowed to take root and the characters learn how to live under democracy. De Robertis does a fine job of probing the harsh realities of what it takes to carve out a life of freedom under an oppressive government. (Sept.)
			 --Staff (Reviewed 08/19/2019) (Publishers Weekly, vol 266, issue 33, p)
  • Social activist and novelist (e.g., the multi-best-booked The Invisible Mountain), de Robertis opens her new work in 1977 Uruguay, where the military flattens all dissent and being homosexual is virtually life-threatening. Here, five cantoras ("female singers") befriend one another, traveling between the remote, uninhabited Cabo Polonio and Montevideo as they struggle to live their lives. At 25,000 copies, not the hugest first printing, but touted as the author's masterpiece. --Barbara Hoffert (Reviewed 04/01/2019) (Library Journal, vol 144, issue 3, p53)
  • /* Starred Review */ In the shadow of a violent dictatorship, five queer women find the courage and strength to live their truth. De Robertis' (The Gods of Tango, 2015, etc.) latest novel starts in 1977 with the Uruguayan military dictatorship suppressing dissidents and homosexuals through rape, jailing, and disappearing. Calling themselves cantoras, or women who sing, five queer women begin to carve out a place for themselves in the world: Flaca, Romina, Anita "La Venus," Malena, and Paz. Brought together by Flaca, the women take a weeklong trip to Cabo Polonio, a sleepy, secluded coastal village, where they find a haven among horrors. On the beach, the women laugh late into the night, make love unabashedly, and share secrets over whiskey and yerba maté. The friends become family. On their first trip, Paz, the youngest, begins to discover an alternative way of being: "A secret way to be a woman. A way that blasted things apart, that melted the map of reality." Rich and luscious, De Robertis' writing feels like a living thing, lapping over the reader like the ocean. Carefully crafted and expertly observed, each sentence is an elegant gift: "Stars clamored around a meager slice of moon," and "she was keenly aware of [her] movements...as if a thread stretched between them, a spider's thread, glimmering and inexhaustibly strong." Over the course of three decades, the women fall in and out of love; have brushes with the brutal regime; defy familial and societal expectations; and, most of all, unapologetically live their lives as cantoras. At one point, the unhappily married La Venus wonders: "Why did life put so much inside a woman and then keep her confined to smallness?" De Robertis' novel allows these women to break those confines and find greatness in themselves and each other. A stunning novel about queer love, womanhood, and personal and political revolution. (Kirkus Reviews, July 1, 2019)
Assigning source
Provided by publisher
Cataloging source
DLC
Dewey number
813/.6
Index
no index present
LC call number
PS3604.E129
LC item number
C36 2019
Literary form
fiction
Target audience
adult

Context

Context of Cantoras

Work of

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