LGBTQ literature in Brazil

LGBTQ literature in Brazil encompasses literature written by Brazilian authors that involves plots or characters that are part of or related to sexual diversity. It has a tradition that dates back to the seventeenth century, specifically the work of the poet Gregório de Matos, who throughout his life wrote a series of satirical poems of a homosexual nature about his political adversaries.

The first narrative works referencing homosexuality came almost two centuries later, in the 1870s and 1880s, by writers such as Joaquim Manuel de Macedo, Aluísio Azevedo, and Raul Pompéia. The works of these authors, most of which were framed in the genre of naturalism, presented a view of homosexuality based on conceptions of the time, under a negative stereotype of sexual deviation. In the midst of this context, the novel Bom-Crioulo (1895) appeared, written by Adolfo Caminha. This is traditionally pointed out as the initiator of Brazilian LGBTQ literature, in addition to being considered the first LGBTQ novel in Latin America. Although he also shared a negative view of homosexuality, he was the first to center a plot on a same-sex relationship.

The beginning of the twentieth century saw the entry of authors like João do Rio, who addressed sexual diversity in some of his stories and who were known to be homosexual, and the publication of such works as Pílades e Orestes, a homoerotic work by Joaquim Machado de Assis, and O menino do Gouveia (1914), an anonymous story considered the first LGBTQ pornographic work of Brazil. The novel Vertigem (1926), by Laura Villares, is notorious for being the first work written by a Brazilian woman to address lesbianism, although it also gives a moralistic and condemnatory view of the protagonist.

During the post-Estado Novo era, several texts continued to present LGBTQ themes in subtle forms.