Rants & Raves: “SEETHING WITH QUEER SENSUALITY: A Book Review of Arrive In My Hands by Trinidad Escobar” by Elsa Valmidiano

Published by Black Josei Press on February 14, 2022
ISBN: 978-1-7324190-8-7 (Print) US$20
ISBN: 978-1-7324190-9-4 (Digital) US$10 
120-page collection of Queer erotica poetry comics
Available to purchase on: BlackJoseiPress.com
Domestic and international shipping available

“That’s one of the things that ‘queer’ can refer to: the open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning when the constituent elements of anyone’s gender, of anyone’s sexuality aren’t made (or can’t be made) to signify monolithically.”

Cover for “Arrive In My Hands: Queer Erotic Comics” by Trinidad Escobar

This review opens with a quote from the late Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick, leading American academic scholar in Queer Theory, to examine Arrive In My Hands by Trinidad Escobar. Arrive In My Hands manifests Sedgwick’s definition of queer: that open mesh of possibilities, gaps, overlaps, dissonances and resonances, lapses and excesses of meaning with regards to how we view sex—not from a white, patriarchal, monolithic, heteronormative lens, but rather from a Queer, Brown, femme, elegant, mystical, playful, and at times humorous lens that is just as arousing if not more satisfying. An award-winning poet and cartoonist, Escobar’s literary and visual talents exist simultaneously, where the poetry cannot exist without the image, and the image cannot exist without the poetry.

Throughout the collection are Brown femme characters and demigoddesses who unapologetically exist independent of the white gaze. Mermaids, witches, and Manananggal allude to the Filipina feminine mystique before Spanish colonization and patriarchy swept throughout the 7,000-island archipelago in the 1500s and nearly crushed and eradicated them, though in Escobar’s work, our Queer matriarchal demigoddesses still exist among us, drawn and poetically unveiled by a Diasporic present-day supernatural Visayan high priestess and witch herself: Trinidad Escobar, using her gift of poetry and cartoon to carry on their existence and legacy.

In “Softly,” a rather innocuous scene takes place between two female characters but where suspense leaves the reader to hold their breath to see what will happen next. An obvious attraction exists where you anticipate some kind of touch to happen, but instead arrive at a tantalizing cliffhanger ending. 

In “Patient and Seething,” a zombie apocalypse finds a solitary femme self who is the last survivor and has barricaded herself in a public library away from the masses. She reads a book while masturbating, basking in her intellectual and sexual pleasure while a zombie population watches her behind glass windows, bereft of intellect and pleasure themselves, as she muses: 

“The world wants 
to devour me? 

I’ll let it wait 
for me 
a day longer, 

in the blistering 
nuclear air, 

patient and seething, 

until I am finished.”

A selection from the comic “Sinister Laughter.”

Unlike a patriarchal lens that focuses on images of penetrative sex to trigger arousal, Escobar focuses on nuanced images, such as holding another’s hand in “Sinister Laughter,” where sensual suggestion gently invites arousal. 

In “Little Goth Mouse,” eroticism is like a smooth ribbon wrapping fragrant luscious fruit where a bat-like femme figure surrenders to BDSM. Here, submission is not violent but nurturing and safe—one figure under the protection of another, like two spoons, one caving into another in passionate embrace: 

“You are full, your desire
wafts between your
shoulder blades, your
skin redolent of citrus
and autumn rain.

You are 
here…”

Escobar also brilliantly reclaims the folkloric creatures and high priestesses of her Motherland, the Philippines. As a Visayan immigrant in the United States, Escobar shows her Motherland’s folkloric creatures and high priestesses in their full glory through macabre scenes of horror and desire. While the scenes are explicit such as in “Devil’s Blue” and “Genuflect,” they also exhibit a slow climb toward orgasm. 

A selection from the comic “Everlasting.”

More significantly, Escobar redefines the Mangkukulam and Manananggal in her reimagined fairy tale, “Everlasting.” From the original Philippine folklore, we Filipinos know the Mangkukulam as a witch while the Manananggal is our beloved vampiric viscera sucker, who, a beautiful woman by day, transforms into a monster at midnight, detaching her torso from the waist. Bat-like wings emerge from the Manananggal’s shoulder blades, and she leaves her lower half behind while her winged torso flies away to hunt for prey, primarily fetuses, where she climbs onto rooftops of homes and slips her long thin proboscis-like tongue to feed on the unborn of sleeping pregnant women. 

Escobar reclaims the Manananggal where there is no splitting of the body but a wholeness of self and communion with a Mangkukulam. Both femme creatures are not cannibalistic solitary creatures but one of them is a human princess who, out of forbidden love for the Mangkukulam, transforms into a Manananggal during sex with fangs and bat wings as she reaches orgasm, while soldiers arrive with their torches, threatening to destroy their union. The viscera sucking proboscis tongue of the Manananggal is not used to feed on fetuses from unsuspecting mothers. Rather, Escobar reclaims the Manananggal’s tongue as a sexual device for cunnilingual pleasure: 

“Soft lips, 

sharp teeth, 

a heart full 

of pain, 

of me, 
churning.”

A selection from the comic “Weather.”

Escobar’s Mangkukulam and Manananggal are not our enemies. They reflect instead our deepest hunger—what we would do for love that ultimately unleashes our true nature. 

Due to the explicit content of the collection, Arrive In My Hands is for readers 18+ years of age. What you will find is not cheap smut, but an allegorical sophistication that not only arouses the libido but stimulates the critical mind. Each poem comic is a small gateway to Queer power—the inclusivity of all those contradictions, struggles, rebellions, truths, and questions that topple a white patriarchal heteronormative hegemony. Arrive In My Hands reveals that we are seething with Queerness and feminism where we find ourselves finally free. 

About Elsa Valmidiano

Elsa Valmidiano is an Ilocana-American essayist and poet. She is the author of We Are No Longer Babaylan, her award-winning debut essay collection from New Rivers Press. Her book reviews appear in Poetry Northwest, The Collidescope, Bridge Eight, and Up the Staircase Quarterly. Her poetry and prose are widely published in literary journals and anthologies where her work most recently appears in Marías at Sampaguitas, Canthius, Hairstreak Butterfly Review, and MUTHA Magazine. Her own erotic poems appear in New Zealand’s erotic literary journal Aotearotica. On her website, slicingtomatoes.com, Elsa curates a directory of Pinay visual artists from the Philippines and Diaspora whose work she features alongside her poetry and prose.