Snag Your Copy Las Aventuras De La China Iron Brought To You By Gabriela Cabezón Cámara Conveyed In EText

Adventures of China Iron is loosely based on the epic Argentinian poem Martín Fierro, In the novel the main protagonist is his wife, who gets a fleeting mention in the original poem.
Thats all I know about the source material,

The book is essentially a road trip: China Iron, fed up of her live, just leaves her house for better pastures.
Accompanied by the Scottish Liz and her dog and later on a renegade gaucho joins them China goes through a voyage of selfdiscovery.


The first main theme is gender, Throughout the book China finds out that she is in love with Liz and sheds her femininity the books cover is a clue there and slowly looks more like a male, until the middle of the book when the transformation of her character is complete.
China also explores her feelings of love for another woman and the amount of satisfaction she getting out of it.


Freedom is another big theme, Although China breaks free from every sense of the word : from home and from her gender she comes across others who are not so lucky.
This is seen in the third part of the novel when the four of the travellers come across an Indian tribe.


Most of all I saw The Adventures of China Iron an unabashed love letter to Argentinian nature.
There are many lush descriptions of the pampas and a lot of species of fauna and flora are mentioned.
These passages do dominate the book and thanks to the fantastic translations we readers are able to experience every blade of grass and birdsong that accompanies this group.


Along with the beautiful moments, there are ones that verge on the grotesque, In the afterword the translators describe the book as kaleidoscopic and that is apt,

Although knowledge of the source material would enrich my reading of the novel, I cannot complain.
The Adventures of China Iron is a thoroughly enjoyable romp of a novel, This is a novel with such an uplifting energy to it as it follows the adventures of a young woman caught in a time of bloody conflict and the formation of a modern nation.
But it's also a clever and selfassured historical satire in the way it upturns patriarchal values in favour of those who are marginalized especially female and queer individuals.
“The Adventures of China Iron” feels like a comedy in the classic sense of beginning in tragic circumstances and ending with a joyous resolution.
Set in Argentina during the political turbulence of, the story concerns a journey of a heroine born into nothing she is an orphan without a name, raised by a tyrannical woman and forced into marriage during her adolescence to the gaucho Martin Fierro, a heroic masculine figure from Argentine folklore.
After giving birth to two sons she is cast aside by her famed husband and this is where the novel starts with this heroine establishing her own name as well as naming a stray dog who has become her only friend.
She reclaims the name China from its dismissive/negative connotations it's a Quechuan term for a lowerclass girl or woman and maintains her husband's surname of Iron, the English word for Fierro.
From here she bands together with Liz, a Scottish woman travelling across country and Rosario, a cattle farmer searching for somewhere to set up with his herd.
We follow their entertaining journey to find a home and establish a family that is “linked by more than bloodlines.
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Read my full sitelinkreview of The Adventures of China Iron by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara on LonesomeReader Deconstrucción del Martín Fierro y de la típica dicotomía argentina de civilización o barbarie.
Lleno de vida y alegría, Prosa poética. Curioso sincretismo de culturas indígenas y criollas, Temáticas queer, sexualidad no tradicional y bien explícita, con un propósito narrativo, claramente anclada en la intencionalidad del libro.


Algo distinto, interesante,

Es notable el cambio total de atmósfera al comparar este libro con lo otro que he leído de esta autora: el combo del cuento y la novela gráfica Beya: Le viste la cara a Dios, que era oscuro, brutal y vengativo y también aprecié mucho, solo que de diferente manera.
Hay un poco de brutalidad en partes de este libro, pero es mucho más vital y, como dijo alguien por ahí, no se presenta como una necesaria venganza contra siglos de imposición de determinada moral, sino como una expresión de otras formas posibles de vivir y sentir.
A wonderfully fun and entertaining read,
Shortlisted for theInternational Booker,

I have not read “Martin Fierro” the poem by José Hernández that Gabriela Cabezón Cámara uses as a base for her narrative.
I do know that with this novel, the author gives China Iron the main character role instead of Fierro.
In fact, two strong female characters steal pretty much the whole narrative,

China is an orphan, her father having been killed by Fierro, who then proceeds to marry China and they have two sons before Fierro is conscripted and taken to the Indian frontier to fight with the army.


Rather than be upset, China, who is only fourteen, and has been a slave all her life, is ecstatic.
Free for the first time in her life she jumps on board a wagon with a Scotswoman named Elizabeth, who is hell bent on travelling to their estancia to rescue her husband.
An “Estancia” is a South American farm or ranch,

For the naïve China, this adventure is more of a cultural earthquake than shock, Everything is new for her, the land, the people, the wildlife and plants, While taking all this in, Liz educates China on the British Empire, and its relentless and insatiable drive for colonization.


As the women travel along together, they become lovers, another chance for Liz to educate China and open her eyes which have seen so little.
Another freedom awakened. Both women change dramatically throughout the novel and are completely different characters by the end of the book.


Throughout the book, the authors descriptive writing is so vivid, the landscape starts to feel like a painting.
However, by the last third of the book, this descriptive writing became a little bit much for me, overpowering the narrative.
At times it almost feels like a geographical expedition with the author describing the new cultures, plant life, and fauna in minute detail.


The time period in which the novel is set, late nineteenth century, is a tumultuous time for the seemingly neverending open plains, or pampas, of Argentina.
With the English encroaching, their beastly steam engines advancing every day, to the gauchos, the Argentinians, and Indians, locked in neverending internecine battles.


I did enjoy reading how the Indians work in harmony with the land, How they adapt to flooding and live, to them at least, a somewhat utopic, nomadic lifestyle on the open pampas, juxtaposed against industrialisation and the claustrophobic smoggy miasma covered “modern” cities of Britain.


An enjoyable read,.Stars.

gifted thebookerprizes Who is up for a queer retelling of José Hernándezs epic poem Martín Fierro Who, like me, is severely underread when it comes to Latin American classics and has never heard of Martín Fierro before now Well never fear because this book is still amazing even if you have zero context of this epic poem! I wikipediad it a few times but I think The Adventures of China Iron stands well on its own, and if you ARE familiar with Martín Fierro youll just have an even better time with it!
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Set in the Pampas of Argentina, this is Gabriela Cabezón Cámaras reimagining of an epic poem, told from the perspective of Fierros young wife who he left behind while he went off doing gaucho things.
We journey with China pronounced Cheena, and referring to a woman, wife, servant or girl, and not really a name at all but what China is used to going by both physically and mentally as she traverses the Pampas with her new companion Liz, a Scottish woman and discovers her sexual awakening along the way.

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The translation was undertaken as a team by Iona Macintyre and Fiona Mackintosh and they have done an incredible job.
The language in this book is so rich, filled with references to Argentinian nature, and then smatterings of Guaraní vocabulary later, not to mention they had to

tackle translations of poetry.
Needless to say they pull it off spectacularly, transporting the reader to the scene, discovering a whole new world alongside China Iron.

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This book just proved to me that charcopress are out here publishing the most cutting edge books in the industry.
You need to check them out if youre at all interested in contemporary Latin American lit!
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A sensual, subversive novel that just begs to be reread and analysed, Seriously, there are so many layers to this book and so many lenses it could be read through you would read it differently every time I think, and gain something new each time too.
Ive rated itfor now but I do think the more times I read it, the more I would get from it and the more I would love it!
If it's not its own genre perhaps it should be: the on the road story, a setting of toing and froing a journey novel, let's call it.


The eponymous China pronounced cheena is journeying in a covered wagon across the Argentinian pampas with Liz, Scottish and worldly.
It's fuzzy how they got together and where their husbands and children are is fuzzier still, No matter. It's all about the journey, right

And, of course, these books these books! intersect with our own reading journey.
I had just put down sitelinkFifty Sounds, a wonderful book about a young Englishwoman journeying to Japan and immersing herself in the sounds of the language.
And just a few pages into this next one, I hear China and Liz trading their languages with each other: We were a chorus of different languages.
It was not till the Afterword though that the translators informed on their own challenges, of older poems, of a wide vocabulary for flora and fauna, and in particular of the use of Guaraní vocabulary in the latter part of the book.
They explain that this had a foreignizing effect on the Spanishspeaking reader, the words being unfamiliar to most readers of Spanish.
So imagine me. The physical journey charted in the novel is thus paralleled by a linguistic journey into new territory, they wrote.


There is another journey in the book, China's sexual reawakening, explorations, and perhaps through that into a wiser and more confident being.
So, the reader is wide awake when the fuzzy husbands and children show up, Just sayin'.

The journey novel, of course, does two things: it allows for vignettes as waystations and it makes some ultimate point or two.
I enjoyed the vignettes. Who doesn't like the occasional drunken orgy The larger point perhaps the place of pampas in Argentinian nationbuilding stayed fuzzy.
The sound of language only goes so far, My video review: sitelink youtube. com/watchvPiCw La china, esa china que en el Martin Fierro apenas se nombra, es acá protagonista, Es ella quien nos narra su viaje por La Pampa, una Pampa que es puro cielo, Donde la flora y la fauna parecen articular su propio lenguaje,

Una vez que Fierro es obligado a sumarse al ejército, La China se despide de todo lo que la ata en la tapera y decide sumarse al viaje en carreta que planea Liz, una mujer inglesa, que va a buscar a su marido, el gringo, también reclutado.
Al viaje se suman, primero, Estreya, un perro negro cantor y luego Rosario, un poco gaucho, un poco indio, un poco guaraní.


Poco le importa a nuestra China encontrar a Fierro, lo que quiere es la aventura, Devorarse el mundo y ser devorada, De ahí, la gula de la mirada, el hambre del cuerpo que también observa, desatado de sí mismo.
La China se nombra, se bautiza hasta ser muchas, hasta ser todas las que no le permitieron ser.
Y es ahí, a través de esa multiplicidad de cuerpos y de ojos que nunca son suficientes que la China habita el placer.


El libro está dividido en tres partes: el desierto, el fortín y tierra adentro, Tres espacios explorados en la narrativa gauchesca, De la civilización a la barbarie, conceptos que se desconfiguran a medida que los personajes se acercan a las tierras de Kaukalitrán, un paraíso.
DNF
Resposta feminina ao poema "Martín Ferro" de José Hernández, uma obra muito popular na Argentina.
É engraçado, mas no fundo é uma "coming of age road trip", e eu não sou apreciadora de livros sobre viagens e não estou com paciência para histórias de inocência.
Como se não bastasse, está sempre a falar da chuva, e isso para mim não é literatura, é conversa de circunstância na padaria.


Até à página:
"One rainy dawn I put on my first ever raincoat, "
"It was raining again and light was reflected on all living things, "
"Until the rain came again and once more wed see a cemetery of Indian braves at our feet.

"It poured with rain and the water swept away the merciful dust, ".