Racing Gender to the Edge of the World: Decoding the Transmasculine Amazon Cannibal in Early Modern Travel Writing

The pervasive figure of the Amazon cannibal woman in early modern travel writing is depicted as animalistic, hyper-sexualized, and predominately a racialized "other." Using early modern travel literature like Sir Walter Raleigh's The Discoverie of Guiana and the illustrations of Theodor De Bry, this essay argues that the Amazonian cannibal woman is a transmasculine figure, serving as a platform for white European thinkers to reshape their ideologies around race and gender. Through trans and critical race theory, this essay reimagines early modern representations of indigenous women as part of the work of recovering transhistoricity. By taking up intersectional feminist calls to attend to gender as an inherently racialized project, this essay considers travel writings and visual materials as a space in which white European ideals of gender and sexuality can be constructed through the vilification of (and desire for) people of color's bodies and behaviors.