We Are Green and Trembling is a novel by Argentine writer Gabriela Cabezón Cámara. The book is the English translation of her Spanish novel translated by Robin Myers. Set in the landscapes of colonial South America, the novel follows Antonio as he recounts his extraordinary life while writing a letter to his aunt, the prioress of the convent he once fled. After abandoning religious life, he takes on many roles—mule driver, shopkeeper, soldier, cabin boy, and conquistador—moving through the turbulent world of the Spanish Empire. Central to the narrative is Antonio’s care for two Guaraní girls he rescues from enslavement, even as he is pursued by the army he deserted. Through this journey, the novel explores themes of gender identity and transformation, colonial violence and resistance, environmental consciousness, Indigenous survival and solidarity, and the idea of continual metamorphosis and reinvention.
“My beloved aunt,
I am as innocent and forged in the image and likeness of God as any other, as every other, though I have been a cabin boy, shopkeeper, and soldier, and before then, long before, a small girl at your skirts. “Daughter,” “little daughter,” so did you call me, and not even now, not even with my martial shoulders and my mustache and my calloused sword-wielding hands, would you think to describe me otherwise. Dear aunt, I would ask you if I could, are you still alive? For I believe you are, and I believe you are waiting to bestow upon me what is yours, what was ours; the convent of Saint Sebastián el Antiguo, whose construction was commanded by your grandfather, the father of the father of my father, the Marquis Don Sebastián Erauso Pérez Errázuriz de Donostia. Give it to some other girl, and, I beg of you, pray do keep reading these words.”
Excerpt from ‘We Are Green and Trembling’ by Gabriela Cabezón Cámara
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