This article examines Still They Rise: Gender, Bodies, and Writing in Brazil and Beyond, a co-taught advanced Portuguese course that approached language and literature as a single act of world-making. Grounded in feminist, decolonial, and queer epistemologies, the course proposed tension and confluence  as  guiding  principles  in  the  classroom,by  bringing  bodies,  genres,  and  histories  to  the forefront, tounsettle canonical boundaries while cultivating collective forms of listening. We reflect on how these principles shaped the syllabus –pairing authors who rarely inhabit the same frame –and how our guests wove their voices into our trajectory. In practice, a discussion-circle format and student-led  sessions  shifted  authority  laterally,  turning  reading  into  a  shared  act.  The  final  assignments translated these dialogues into materiality throughtranslation, textiles, performance, and photography, exemplified here by a student’s diorama-house that reimagined a series of rooms “of one’s own” as a collective,  intersectional  home. Eventually,  we  argue  that  teaching  Brazilian  and  Latin  American literature  abroad  can build epistemic  and  affective  bridges,  transforming  reading  into  a  practice  of relation and enabling students to thinkthrough difference and encounter.