We Are Green and Trembling
ABOUT
THE BOOK
From deep in the wilds of the New World, Antonio de Erauso writes a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the convent he escaped as a young girl. Since leaving his past behind, he’s become Antonio, conquistador. Now, hiding in the jungle and hounded by the army he deserted, Antonio is caring for two Guaraní girls he rescued from enslavement. But the New World has one more metamorphosis in store, which might save them all from extinction.
We Are Green and Trembling is a masterful subversion of Latin American history, religious tyranny and the mistreatment of women and indigenous people – finding in the rainforest a magical space where transformation is not only possible but necessary.
Original title in Spanish Las niñas del naranjel published by Random House Buenos Aires
ABOUT
THE TRANSLATOR Robin
Myers
Robin Myers is a poet and translator. A 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, she was shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize. Recent translations include We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara; Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza (co-translated with Sarah Booker); and Bariloche, Love Training, and A Father Is Born by Andrés Neuman, among many other works of poetry and prose.
Robin Myers is a poet and translator. A 2023 National Endowment for the Arts Translation Fellow, she was shortlisted for the 2024 Queen Sofía Spanish Institute Translation Prize. Recent translations include We Are Green and Trembling by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara; Death Takes Me by Cristina Rivera Garza (co-translated with Sarah Booker); and Bariloche, Love Training, and A Father Is Born by Andrés Neuman, among many other works of poetry and prose.
NOMINATING LIBRARY COMMENTS
We Are Green and Trembling, by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara and translated by Robin Myers, is a dazzling, unclassifiable novel that reimagines colonial history with poetic ferocity and narrative innovation. Through the fictionalized journey of Antonio, a queer Basque convent runaway caught in the violent maelstrom of 17th-century South America, the novel delivers a lyrical, multi-voiced reflection on identity, conquest, and transformation. Cabezón Cámara’s prose, rendered with exquisite care by Myers, vibrates with sensory detail and hallucinatory rhythm, blending Guaraní, Spanish, Basque, and English into a textured literary fabric. The voice alternates between intimate letters, omniscient perspective, and even non-human narrators, creating a world that is at once brutal and dreamlike. Fiercely original in both structure and style, the book resists conventional historical fiction, embracing instead a radical, poetic approach that feels simultaneously ancient and urgent. Its themes—colonial violence, gender fluidity, ecological destruction—resonate far beyond its time and place, speaking to contemporary global conversations with clarity and intensity. With its bold language, wild imagination, and emotional depth, We Are Green and Trembling is an unforgettable literary achievement that deserves wide recognition and readership. (Biblioteca Utopía)