Love that Burns Hot Enough to Last: Scenes from Trans Tropical Love

This essay meditates on a time spent in the Brazilian tropics, as part of one’s journey into womanhood. Titled after a line from Whitney Houston’s “I Wanna Dance with Somebody,” it reflects on a trans woman’s experience of queer desire in the tropics, in light of her own womanhood that remains a tenuous argument for some people who still believe that their bodies have been named to precede and prevail over those of trans, queer, and nonbinary folx. In quiet lyrical turns, the essay, invoking tropical nature, explores the possibilities of queer relations, as well as the opportunity to teach the world about beauty, so as to recreate the world and reexist in it as a woman proud and confident of her own circumstance—to “become it. Love.”