Tropicália • Print Only

Summary

Devouring Americans from vending machines; longing for rats to greet them in their toilets; waking up not as a Kafkaesque insect, but as an alienated immigrant without a work visa—the characters of this lyrical collection fight for their human needs in absurd circumstances. Spun from 1980s America comedic horror, Carmen Miranda, and the thin metallic plastic of emergency blankets, Tropicália reengages with 20th-century Brazilian art movements (Antropofagia and Tropicalism) from within 21st-century USA. The collection portrays the rich inner worlds of characters who cannot ignore how systemic forces shape their belonging, grief, and love.

Details

• Selected for the 2020 Newfound Prose Prize
• Perfect-bound, risograph cover, 80 pages, 5″ x 7″, FSC-certified paper
• Order print + e-book
• Order e-book only

Praise

“Smart. Funny. Weird. Bilingual. Timely as hell. Political. Brave. I absolutely loved the pacing, clarity, economy of language, and wild imagination. The way she engages with current events and popular culture in such a reduced space is brilliant.”
        —Gabino Iglesias, author of Coyote Songs

“Trippy, eerie, wry, and always profound, Lima achieves what most writers strive for, taking the reader on unexpected but always satisfying journeys while balancing the speculative and the real. Lima’s stories keep you thinking and reading. A gifted poet as well as a fiction writer, she knows how to create worlds that draw you in and leave you wanting more. By every measure, Tropicália marks a marvelous fictional debut.”
        —John Keene, author of Counternarratives

“Balancing absurdity, satire, and heart, Lima’s stories are delightfully weird and entertaining, but something ugly, haunting, and important lurks beneath, consuming her protagonists, and, in turn, her readers: the horror of what it means to belong, or not, in America.”
        —Necessary Fiction

“Lima’s book demands to be read as America finds itself at a crossroads that will shape the country for generations. For everyone who knows or is an immigrant and the anti-immigration policies of America, Tropicália is a lyrical collection that will resonate for years to come.”
        —EcoTheo

Author

Ananda Lima’s work has appeared in Poets.org, Kenyon Review Online, Gulf Coast, Colorado Review, and elsewhere. Her poetry collection Mother/land (Black Lawrence Press, 2021) won the 2020 Hudson Prize. She is also the author of the poetry chapbooks Translation (Paper Nautilus, 2019) and Amblyopia (Bull City Press, 2020). She has an MA in Linguistics from UCLA and an MFA in Creative Writing in Fiction from Rutgers University, Newark.

Artwork

Cover by LK James.