A galvanizing look at life on the margins of society by a crowning figure of Latin America's queer counterculture who celebrated &ldquomelodrama, kitsch, extravagance, and vulgarity of all kinds&rdquo (Garth Greenwell) in playful, performative, linguistically inventive essays, now available in English for the first timeA Penguin Classic&ldquoI speak through my difference,&rdquo wrote Pedro Lemebel, an openly queer writer and artist living through Chile&rsquos AIDS epidemic and the collapse of the Pinochet dictatorship. In brilliantly innovative essays that combine memoir, reportage, fiction, history, and poetry, he brought visibility and dignity to sexual minorities, the poor, and the powerless. Touching on everything from Che Guevara to Elizabeth Taylor, from the aftermath of authoritarian rule to the daily lives of Chile&rsquos locas&mdasha slur for trans women and effeminate gay men that he boldly reclaims&mdashhis writing infuses political urgency with playfulness, realism with absurdism, and resistance with camp, and his AIDS crónicas immortalize a generation of Chileans doubly &ldquodisappeared&rdquo by casting each loca, as she falls sick, in the starring role of her own private tragedy. This volume brings together the best of his work, introducing readers of English to the subversive genius of a literary activist and queer icon whose acrobatic explorations of the Santiago demimonde reverberate around the world.