Brown Neon

Raquel Gutiérrez is an arts critic, writer, poet, and educator. Born and raised in Los Angeles, Gutiérrez credits the queer and feminist diy, post-punk zine culture of the 1990s, plus Los Angeles County and Getty paid arts internships, for introducing her/them to the various vibrant art and music scenes and communities throughout Southern California. Gutiérrez is a 2021 recipient of the Rabkin Prize in Arts Journalism and a 2017 recipient of the Andy Warhol Foundation Arts Writers Grant. She is/They are faculty for Oregon State University–Cascades’ Low Residency MFA in Creative Writing. Gutiérrez calls Tucson, Arizona, home.

Praise for Brown NeonWinner of the 2023 Publishing Triangle Judy Grahn Award for Lesbian NonfictionFinalist for the 2023 Lambda Literary Award in Lesbian Memoir/BiographyA New Yorker Best Book of 2022An Oprah Daily Must-Read Book by Latinx AuthorsA SPIN Favorite Book of 2022A Hyperallergic Best Art Book of 2022A Ms. Magazine Favorite Book of 2022A Latino Stories Best New Latinx Author of 2022“In these essays . . . encounters in Los Angeles and the Southwest with aging punks, border activists, lesbian legends, and others give rise to explorations of Latinx identity, cultural resistance, and the role of art.” —The New Yorker“Singular and inimitable . . . focusing much of the collection on the physical land that has alternately sustained, commodified, and criminalized so many modes of being.” —Emma Specter, Vogue“Ambitious in scope and narrative structure, perhaps most impressive is the way in which [Gutiérrez] conquers such disparate terrain . . . to reveal how much connection we all share.” —Rachel León, Los Angeles Review of Books“Whether it is creating a cartography of queerness through family lineage and propinquity or digging through the layers of sorrow, love, and trauma to uncover the true borders and frontiers of our identity, each essay offers a unique consciousness at work.” —Ernesto Mestre-Reed, Oprah Daily“Gutiérrez shines bright light on the brutal injustice of borders, and elucidates the uncanny violence inherent to desert land art. . . . Dazzling.” —Sadie Dupuis, SPIN“Written with energy, critical acumen, and raw emotion, this is as memorable as it is original.” —Publishers Weekly“A bold and brave debut collection from an intriguing new literary voice. A probing, tender reckoning with space, place, and identity.” —Kirkus“A wonderful collection of essays. . . . [Gutiérrez’s] prose is fresh, it feels personal. . . . Her multifaceted mindscape comes through on every page.” —Hrag Vartanian, Hyperallergic“Thoughtfully tackles questions of gender, sexuality, and performance.” —K.W. Colyard, Bustle“With beauty, and unmistakable care for person and place, Raquel Gutiérrez maps life’s butchest, sweetest, and saddest mysteries.” —Myriam Gurba“Brown Neon emerges as an instant foundational text, and Raquel Gutiérrez as a leading critic, witness, and visionary not only of the queer, brown Southwest, but our current American nightmare. Gutiérrez’s essays illuminate an otherwise ignored history of pivotal brown aesthetics that have changed the way some of us create and approach art. Beyond essential.” —Fernando A. Flores“Raquel Gutiérrez has crafted, in these inspired and astonishing essays, an unforgettably affecting voice that recounts parables of brown life in the arts. In narratives that describe the intergenerational landscape of queer cultural memory and self-ecologies of Latinx innovation within the current U.S. political economy, Gutiérrez dazzles. Sentences here excite and punctuate as they convey the historical losses and embodied gains comprising all those energies that animate artists, activists, and storytellers alike to ‘sing in similar and simultaneous registers of scarcity and plethora.’”—Roberto Tejada