
Puto
Plays
Duke University Press
Published on 13. February 2026
Book
Hardback
238 pages
978-1-4780-2949-6 (ISBN)
Description
Ricardo A. Bracho is a queer Chicano Marxist playwright from Los Angeles whose theatrical works dramatize the lives of gay Black and Brown partisans of anti-capitalism and decolonization. Characterized by their playful use of theory, Bracho's plays utilize the stage as a place for characters to debate questions of sexual and political liberation. Though Bracho's work has been breaking ground within the experimental Latinx theater and arts community since the 1990s, his plays have not been widely accessible beyond their staging. Driven by passion-for politics, for the dancefloor, for dispossessed bodies, communities, and lands-Bracho's award-winning plays express a polyphony of outlaw voices and contemporary dramas. With a foreword by Bracho's teacher and iconic Chicana writer CherrIe Moraga, an afterword by Juana Maria Rodriguez, as well as critical notes and an introduction by editors Jennifer Ponce de Leon, Richard T. Rodriguez, and Randall Williams, Puto makes Bracho's key works available to a broader public for the first time, bringing Bracho's frank, transgressive, and revolutionary work to the forefront just when the world needs it most.
Reviews / Votes
"Bracho is one of the most important and innovative US playwrights of the twentieth and twenty-first centuries. The themes that Bracho takes on in his plays are crucial for understanding racism, colonialism, decolonization, contemporary politics, and liberation for all peoples. These plays constitute a fantastic experimentation in aesthetic form as well. This collection is an outstanding work of dramaturgy."-Maria Josefina Saldana-Portillo, author of Indian Given: Racial Geographies across Mexico and the United States"Puto is the House of Bracho we all need to belong to. Ricardo Bracho's collection of work and reflective writings by his long time carnalas takes us on a joyride filled with house music that refuses the romanticism that art practice is activism. Instead, Puto offers us writing filled with contradictions, exhilaration, mess, and excess that 'gives us another way.'"-Deborah R. Vargas, Associate Professor of Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies, Yale University
More details
Language
English
Place of publication
North Carolina
United States
Target group
Professional and scholarly
Product notice
Cloth over boards
Illustrations
9 illustrations
Dimensions
Height: 235 mm
Width: 157 mm
Thickness: 19 mm
Weight
543 gr
ISBN-13
978-1-4780-2949-6 (9781478029496)
Copyright in bibliographic data and cover images is held by Nielsen Book Services Limited or by the publishers or by their respective licensors: all rights reserved.
Schweitzer Classification
Persons
Ricardo A. Bracho is Abrams Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.
Author
Editor
Afterword
Foreword
Content
Foreword / Cherrie Moraga xi
Author's Acknowledgments xv
Editors' Acknowledgments xix
Introduction / Jennifer S. Ponce de Leon, Richard T. Rodriguez, and Randall Williams 1
The Sweetest Hangover 23
El Santo Joto 67
Ni Madre 73
Mexican Psychotic 81
Appetites I Have Inherited 93
Sissy 99
Puto 139
A Black and A Brown 181
"I Don't Do Plot, I Do Ideology": Interview with Ricardo A. Bracho / Jennifer S. Ponce de Leon 185
Afterword / Juana Maria RodrIguez 207
Bibliography 211
Contributors 215
Author's Acknowledgments xv
Editors' Acknowledgments xix
Introduction / Jennifer S. Ponce de Leon, Richard T. Rodriguez, and Randall Williams 1
The Sweetest Hangover 23
El Santo Joto 67
Ni Madre 73
Mexican Psychotic 81
Appetites I Have Inherited 93
Sissy 99
Puto 139
A Black and A Brown 181
"I Don't Do Plot, I Do Ideology": Interview with Ricardo A. Bracho / Jennifer S. Ponce de Leon 185
Afterword / Juana Maria RodrIguez 207
Bibliography 211
Contributors 215