Blackouts, A Novel By Justin Torres

Blackouts by Justin Torres is a powerful meditation on storytelling, memory, and the hidden corners of history. Set in a remote desert location called the Palace, it follows a young man who cares for Juan Gay, a dying soul who has long haunted the periphery of his life. Juan, a vibrant raconteur and caretaker of the marginalized, has a legacy to pass on: a project centered on Sex Variants: A Study of Homosexual Patterns, an early twentieth-century book of queer testimonies compiled by the researcher Jan Gay, whose groundbreaking work was co-opted and her name obscured.

The book’s redacted pages contain voices that have been muted by history, but Juan’s annotated volumes reveal glimpses of lives lived at the margins. As the narrator and Juan share stories of joy, loss, love, and resilience, they confront the erasures and gaps that persist in historical narratives. Their dialogue becomes an act of reclamation, resurrecting forgotten figures and challenging the passage of time.

Torres’s novel blends fiction with a range of influences—testimonies, photographs, and illustrations—to illuminate the fragments of history left in the shadows. It examines storytelling's power to shape and distort reality, while embracing its potential for defiance and transformation. Blackouts explores the ways we inherit and reconstruct the past, demanding that we confront the ghostly traces of history to understand what has been made and lost. It is an inventive, moving celebration of reclaimed narratives, a work that insists on looking closely at what history has forgotten. 📚❤️