Ricardo A. Bracho is a queer Chicano Marxist playwright from Los Angeles whose theatrical works dramatize the lives of gay Black and Brown partisans of anti-capitalism and decolonization. Characterized by their playful use of theory, Bracho’s plays utilize the stage as a place for characters to debate questions of sexual and political liberation. Though Bracho’s work has been breaking ground within the experimental Latinx theater and arts community since the 1990s, his plays have not been widely accessible beyond their staging. Driven by passion—for politics, for the dancefloor, for dispossessed bodies, communities, and lands—Bracho’s award-winning plays express a polyphony of outlaw voices and contemporary dramas. With a foreword by Bracho’s teacher and iconic Chicana writer Cherríe Moraga, an afterword by Juana Maria Rodriguez, as well as critical notes and an introduction by editors Jennifer Ponce de León, Richard T. Rodriguez, and Randall Williams, Puto makes Bracho’s key works available to a broader public for the first time, bringing Bracho’s frank, transgressive, and revolutionary work to the forefront just when the world needs it most.

Ricardo A. Bracho is Abrams Artist in Residence at the University of Pennsylvania.

Foreword / Cherríe Moraga  xi
Author’s Acknowledgments  xv
Editors’ Acknowledgments  xix
Introduction / Jennifer S. Ponce de León, Richard T. Rodríguez, and Randall Williams  1
The Sweetest Hangover  23
El Santo Joto  67
Ni Madre  73
Mexican Psychotic  81
Appetites I Have Inherited  93
Sissy  99
Puto  139
A Black and A Brown  181
“I Don’t Do Plot, I Do Ideology”: Interview with Ricardo A. Bracho / Jennifer S. Ponce de León  185
Afterword / Juana María Rodríguez  207
Bibliography  211
Contributors  215