Tropics of Desire: Interventions from Queer Latino America (Sexual Cultures Series)

Rating:
Summary: Libro chevere on gay Latino culture!
Review: Too many gay Latin books focus on Spain, basically (though unintentionally) reinforcing the idea that homosexuality is a European phenomenon. To add salt to the wound, they focus upon ancient, obtuse Spanish writings rather than the cool cultural products being made by living gay Latinos. This book avoids that trap. Though there is a brief, cursory mention of Garcia Lorca, all the works analyzed here are about Latin Americans and US Latinos. Quiroga looks at cultural products from these two groups and provides commentary that combines the best thought of queer studies thinkers (Sedgwick, Halperin) with Latino academics (Oboler, Fusco). This book doesn't get bogged down in separating Latin Americans from US Latinos or privileging one group over the other. The book is male-focused, but it is conscious of that and it does include a chapter on lesbian writer Lydia Cabrera. This book is wonderful like Jose Munoz' "Disidentifications" and Manrique's "Eminent Maricones," instead of being boring and cluttered like Molloy's anthology or "?Entiendes?" It's not perfect. Quiroga uses much hyperacademic babble: many sentences I read twice or thrice and they never made sense. He, like all current writers, problematizes the term "gay" but is totally uncritical of this concept "queer." Chapter introductions are long and have nothing to do with the main topics. I don't agree with some of what he said (Example: Gay Latino Carlos dolls are not an ounce as offensive as Ricky "I love Geore W. Bush" Martin.) Still, this book gets progressively better and I may even suggest that people read the last chapters first. This book is a must-have for gay Latino readers.