Finalist for the Minnesota Book Award in Poetry

Finalist for the Kate Tufts Discovery Award

Word from the Publisher:

"A name for the people of Honduras, Catrachos is a term of solidarity and resilience. In these unflinching, riveting poems, Roy G. Guzmán reaches across borders—between life and death and between countries—invoking the voices of the lost. Part immigration narrative, part elegy, and part queer coming-of-age story, Catrachos finds its own religion in fantastic figures such as the X-Men, pop singers, and the ‘Queerodactyl,’ which is imagined in a series of poems as a dinosaur sashaying in the shadow of an oncoming comet, insistent on surviving extinction. With exceptional energy, humor, and inventiveness, Guzmán’s debut is a devastating display of lyrical and moral complexity—an introduction to an immediately captivating, urgently needed voice.”

Praise:

“Catrachos is a fervent, jaw-dropping debut, the kind of blistering chronicle that absolutely could not exist before this. Roy G. Guzmán stomps their unrepentant signature on the well-stomped landscape of the American life story until the hurt, triumph, restlessness, and redemption in these poems could only be theirs. You have read stories of leaving one land for another. You have heard stories about the difficulties of coming out to a staid family and church. But those fractured songs have never been sung this fiercely. Or this well.”—Patricia Smith, author of the collection Incendiary Art

“The powerful dramatic build of Roy G. Guzmán’s poems bears up an opera in forte. Guzmán’s voice carries it all, often bilingually, because ‘Spanglish is caged thunder.’ In Catrachos, a personal and communal life unfolds in narrated events (family stories, childhood memories, abuse, abandonments, hauntings, gambles, murders, and mass shootings) that grow increasingly intense, enlarged as Guzmán stages them. Their work moves across borders of homelands, languages, religion, indigenous identity, queerness, and gender. There’s no confusion here, no bifurcation; instead contradictions are contained, a profound resolution of self asserts. There’s an indigeneity here, too, that will not forget an ancestor’s ‘thousand / stolen acres’ or the physical features shared across people of Honduras, Guatemala, Florida, and the Midwest. The breadth and expanse of description reminds me of an alternate Hart Crane, one grown in fierce female love and engaged in an America where queerness, though still under threat and often silenced, will not stay silent unless silence speaks. In Catrachos, silence, even absence, grows loud enough to fill pages.”—Heid E. Erdrich, author of the forthcoming collection Little Big Bully and editor of the anthology New Poets of Native Nations

“As the son of immigrants, as a queer man, as a poet, I’ve been waiting for a book like Catrachos. Endlessly inventive and sonically brilliant, the poems refuse borders; each poem is a gorgeous nexus where numerous dictions, public and private memories, and a vast range of influences intersect, blaze into ‘What cradles. What deplumes.’ Roy G. Guzmán’s debut is phenomenal, necessary. It has changed and recharged me.”—Eduardo C. Corral, author of the forthcoming collection Guillotine

Additional Praise:

"Who more than queer people—especially queer people of color—know what it’s like to dance in the face of danger, to sashay away in the face of extinction, to love in the face of stolen liberties? . . . The emergence of a powerful new force."—O, The Oprah Magazine

“Poems of resilience, invention, and queerness call on pop culture, immigrant stories, and an imagined dinosaur called the “Queerodactyl” for a work of humor and heart.”—Minnesota Monthly

"[Catrachos] is a courageous polemic against a growing moral bankruptcy in America, as well as a tender personal story delivered with effortless lyricism."—Publishers Weekly

“Marked by poems that are lyrical and syntactically daring. . . . [Catratchos] nods to the perseverance of excavating a queer self and giving it flight.”—Library Journal 

"The idea that home is both in the here and abroad is present throughout Catrachos. . . . There are incredibly potent moments where Guzmán takes these estrangements—made legible by the fact of queer desire—and writes them into sanctuary."—The Latinx Project

"Catrachos heralds the arrival of a distinctive poetic voice; visually compelling, filled with. . .  wide-ranging, and contrasting images, inventive in its language and forms, and brave for its candor and introspection."—The Rumpus

“Nothing in Catrachos is meant to be taken for granted. Poems speak candidly to each other, the subjects explored add to larger conversations about societal issues, and the language always reflects both the bravery and vulnerability of the human condition.”—Heavy Feather Review

“The stunning experimentation and vivid details [in Catrachos] communicate an aching and sense of melancholy that will enthrall readers. . . . A creative and often harrowing look at society's mistreatment of queer Latinx bodies, and their stunning resilience.”—The Latino Book Review