Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture

Rating:
Summary: Sexuality studies applied to Spanish-language writing
Review: There's a difference between "Spanish" and "Latino." Anthologies that talk about homoerotic stuff in old Spain tend to be boring and irrelevant compared to the great cultural works coming out from gay and lesbian Latinos. Books like "Entiendes?" and "The Hispanic Homograph" annoy me compared to great stuff like Manrique's "Eminent Maricones" or Munoz's "Disidentifications. Unfortunately, this book had too much of the yucko former and not enough of the cool latter.
The purpose of the authors is that sexuality studies of "Hispanic" texts must be done more and is quite worthwhile. The book has good representation of men and women. It has a good article on Reinaldo Arenas. This will probably be useful to Spanish literature majors, but not many others.
Final comment: please forgive the essentialism coming. Both editors mention their opposite-sex spouses. So if I'm reading this correctly, the editors are straight people who find queer theory useful. In this way, they prove that the Eve Sedgwicks of the world do not just discuss English-language literature. This book shows that gay studies can be useful to straights.
I'm not too impressed with this book, but that's not to totally disparage it.