Hispanisms And Homosexualities

A collection of essays addressing gay/lesbian identities and practices in relation to Spanish/Latin American literatures and cultures.

This anthropological volume examines Latin American male homosexualities in Spanish-speaking, Brazilian, and indigenous societies from theoretical, literary, ethnographic, ethnohistorical, and lexicological perspectives. Focusing on issues of family, society, culture, politics, economy and ethnicity, the contributors explore homosexual practices in pre-Columbian indigenous societies and in colonial and modern Latin America. Wide-ranging issues in this volume include homosexual categorization, machismo and homosexuality, the "activo-pasivo" cultural dichotomy, the gay image in Chicano fiction, male homosexuality and Afro-Brazilian possession cults, the gay movement and human rights, and others. The twenty-two articles and essays in this volume demonstrate that Latin American homosexuality is complex and diverse across history, nationalities, and ethnicities. In addition to Stephen O. Murray, contributors are Manuel Arboleda G., beverly N. Chiñas, Wayne R. Dynes, Peter Fry, Paul Kutsche, Luiz Mott, Richard G. Parker, Karl J. Reinhardt, Clark L. Taylor, and Frederick L. Whitman.

In this dynamic collection of essays, many leading literary scholars trace gay and lesbian themes in Latin American, Hispanic, and U.S. Latino literary and cultural texts. Reading and Writing the Ambiente is consciously ambitious and far-ranging, historically as well as geographically. It includes discussions of texts from as early as the seventeenth century to writings of the late twentieth century. Reading and Writing the Ambiente also underscores the ways in which lesbian and gay self-representation in Hispanic texts differs from representations in Anglo-American texts. The contributors demonstrate that--unlike the emphasis on the individual in Anglo- American sexual identity--Latino, Spanish, and Latin American sexual identity is produced in the surrounding culture and community, in the ambiente. As one of the first collections of its kind, Reading and Writing the Ambiente is expressive of the next wave of gay Hispanic and Latin scholarship.

A collection of essays that explores the lives and cultural contributions of gay Latino men in the United States, and analyzes the political and theoretical stakes of gay Latino studies.

What did it mean to be a man in colonial Latin America? More specifically, what did indigenous and Iberian groups think of men who had sexual relations with other men? Providing comprehensive analyses of how male homosexualities were represented in areas under Portuguese and Spanish control, Infamous Desire is the first book-length attempt to answer such questions. In a study that will be indispensable for anyone studying sexuality and gender in colonial Latin America, an esteemed group of contributors view sodomy through the lens of desire and power, relating male homosexual behavior to broader gender systems that defined masculinity and femininity.

Gay Hegemony/ Latino Homosexualities is an interdisciplinary project that weaves ethnographic interviewing with the analysis of texts and material culture to study the intersection of gayness with Latinidad.

"¿Entiendes?" is literally translated as "Do you understand? Do you get it?" But those who do "get it" will also hear within this question a subtler meaning: "Are you queer? Are you one of us?" The issues of gay and lesbian identity represented by this question are explored for the first time in the context of Spanish and Hispanic literature in this groundbreaking anthology. Combining intimate knowledge of Spanish-speaking cultures with contemporary queer theory, these essays address texts that share both a common language and a concern with lesbian, gay, and bisexual identities. Using a variety of approaches, the contributors tease the homoerotic messages out of a wide range of works, from chronicles of colonization in the Caribbean to recent Puerto Rican writing, from the work of Cervantes to that of the most outrageous contemporary Latina performance artists. This volume offers a methodology for examining work by authors and artists whose sexuality is not so much open as "an open secret," respecting, for example, the biographical privacy of writers like Gabriela Mistral while responding to the voices that speak in their writing. Contributing to an archeology of queer discourses, ¿Entiendes? also includes important studies of terminology and encoded homosexuality in Argentine literature and Caribbean journalism of the late nineteenth century. Whether considering homosexual panic in the stories of Borges, performances by Latino AIDS activists in Los Angeles, queer lives in turn-of-the-century Havana and Buenos Aires, or the mapping of homosexual geographies of 1930s New York in Lorca's "Ode to Walt Whitman," ¿Entiendes? is certain to stir interest at the crossroads of sexual and national identities while proving to be an invaluable resource.

"This volume offers the first synthesis in any language of male homosexual behavior in Latin America. Attention is given to the historical origins of homosexual organization as well as the current meaning and complexity of homosexuality in urban, rural, and tribal settings. Extensive vocabularies and lexicons of Spanish and Portuguese terms for homosexual and lesbian behavior are included."--Page [4] of cover.

Gay Hegemony/ Latino Homosexualities is an interdisciplinary project that weaves ethnographic interviewing with the analysis of texts and material culture to study the intersection of gayness with Latinidad.