"City of God is an unsparing account of devastation and empowerment in the age of AIDS. From the body's first mysterious eroticism to its final humiliation and pain, Gil Cuadros gives voice to both the beauty and sorrow of our common fate. His writing cuts like a double-edged sword-at times artful and sharp, at times unfiltered and raw. This is an awesome and haunting book."-David Trinidad
"The sensual, the expressive, the daring, the transformed become the matryrs of every era, every family. Their memoirs, heroics are our most devastating works of art. Gil Cuadros's story 'Unprotected' is a classic of AIDS fiction and deserves a place of honor in the mosaic of American writing."-Sarah Schulman
"In a voice poised between plainspokenness and urgency, Gil Cuadros writes about the remnants of love in a devastated world. The poems and stories in City of God are as dire as they are beautiful, and sharp as a blow to the body."-Bernard Cooper
"I accuse Gil Cuadros of literary seduction in the nth degree...He makes me read on when I want to cry...I do not want to look at his words, and yet I cannot take my eyes away. His images sooth, burn, inspire. I accuse Gil Cuadros of language abuse-his stroke of silk, his pen a bludgeon. I accuse him of heart-bashing."-Wanda Coleman
Gil Cuadros published stories and poems in Indivisible, High Risk 2, and Blood Whispers. His work is also on the compact disc, Verdict and the Violence: Poet's Response to the LA Uprising. He was awarded the 1991 Brody Literature Fellowship, and was one of the first recipients of the PEN Center USA/West grant to writers with HIV. He lived in Los Angeles until his death in 1996.
Industry Reviews
A typical debut, rife with self-reference and autobiography, that adds another voice, but nothing new, to the rich tapestry of gay life in America. In this slim collection of nine short stories and ten poems, Cuadros explores what it means to be young, gay, and Latino in California in the 1990s - growing up, coming out, dealing with the pressures of the Catholic faith and the expectations of a strict family, losing friends and lovers, and living with AIDS. Some of the best stories are those in which the issue of sexuality sort of takes a back seat: A young boy copes with his great-grandfather's death and the family rivalry that rears its ugly head at the funeral in "Indulgences"; a man cares for his dying grandmother and discovers family secrets as he sifts through his grandfather's old journal and his own childhood memories of a friendly ghost in "Reynaldo." But even here, the sexual subtext is strong - these rivalries and secrets are generated by suggestions of homosexuality. Still, Cuadros prefers to attack the subject of gay culture head-on: A suicidal nine-year-old fools around with his "half retarded" cousin in "Chivalry"; a man with AIDS has unsafe sex while struggling with the opposing ideas "This is wrong" and "Shut up, you're going to die anyway" in "Unprotected"; and another dying man discovers a new way of seeing when AIDS steals his eyesight in "Sight." But what Cuadros hopes to be enlightening and despairing feels merely commonplace and dull. This proves even more true in the tragic but uninspired poetry that addresses everything from a first encounter ("To the First Time") to testing positive ("At Risk") to watching a lover die ("The Quilt Series"). What should have been a moving testament to relationships and life in a time of crisis proves agenda-driven and weak. (Kirkus Reviews)
