Blackouts

Queer literary fiction following a young unnamed man nicknamed Nene, attending to Juan, a dying man in an abandoned institution in the middle of the desert. Connecting through the work of Jan Gay, an undervalued queer author and activist from the early 20th century, their rediscovery of her work and life is intercepted by archival documents and flashbacks of their personal experiences as gay men. 
Important themes on historical and scientific erasure and manipulation, rediscovering and passing on knowledge, mental illness, queer history and culture, sexuality and identity, latinidad, etc are touched upon in this book so it was an enriching experiences for me in addition to discover unknown figures of queer history. 
Structurally it's not a linear progression, but a series of vignettes depicting either the protagonists life or historical events.  The writing style also felt very eclectic in style and quite experimental with the use of cinematic screenplay-like writing or pages with just a few lines of dialogue, with an almost surreal feel to it. The desert and abandoned setting also added to this psychedelic atmosphere.
With the addition of real reproduced documents (some with redacted text) , this books more than flirts with other genres like historical fiction and non fiction, plenty of other cultural and literary references too. 
The heavy use of mixed media and eclectic writing style, in addition to the non linear structure, lack of resolved end, sometimes clunky dialogue made for a very challenging read, as it sometimes pulled me out of the story and not connected to the characters. 
Despite some personal reservations on the story itself and the structure, the themes really makes this an important and enriching book for any queer readers. 

This was a really interesting book, a sort of auto-fiction/historical fiction combination about telling stories and being interpreted and pathologized. I liked it a lot.

This was a great read. A picture book that did a lot of story-telling. I was expecting a bit more from the ending, but the narrative style was captivating enough to keep me hooked.

This experimental book provided me such a unique reading experience! Centered around the friendship and ongoing conversation of these two men, this fictional book interweaves literature, queer history, the dark past of psychology in regards to queer identities, and Puerto Rican lore. This is all done through a variety of storytelling techniques where both men encourage each other to lie and embellish the stories to make them interesting and compelling; I especially enjoyed the scenes they described and composed as if they were directing a movie. The storytelling wasn't linear or perfect, but felt messy, organic, and genuine. Although the main characters in this story are fictional, many of the topics and historical figures they talk about are not. I enjoyed the book a lot, but mostly their stories guided me towards different rabbit holes I could get lost in as I learnt about the historical context this story wanted to capture. The use of photos and black out poetry based on the text of the Sex Variants truly enhanced the experience and provided insights into the stories being told. I enjoyed it quite a bit, but since this book walks the line between fiction and nonfiction, I didn't find it as easy to read it for long periods of time.