They Dream Not of Angels but of Men: Homoeroticism, Gender, and Race in Latin American Autobiography

Rating:
Summary: A briliant book! So why does the author limit his audience?
Review: Richmond Ellis posits that gay male Latin American autobiography differs from its Spanish counterpart in that homosexuality cannot be divorced from issues of race, gender, and politics. In this book, the author looks at several writers, most gay, but one straight, to examine this topic. The authors he selects are of various races (black, mestizo, European) and numerous nationalities (Cuban, Mexican, Argentinian, Chilean). Most importantly, he illustrates how both the right and the left in Latin American have oppressed gay men. The author uses "gay," "queer," and "homoerotic" selectively, but equally. He thus sidesteps the boring and tired essentialism vs. constructivism debate. He has a great chapter on the newly popular Reinaldo Arenas. Though others have already written great essays on Arenas (Sanchez Eppler, Manrique, Bejel), Richmond Ellis' addition is welcome and unplagiarized. This book is quite academic; however, everyday readers shouldn't be afraid to give it a try. The introductory chapter discusses Bom-Crioulo, the first homoerotic text in Latin American writing, as well as Kiss of the Spider Woman. So, in ways, this is a veritable encyclopedia of male homoerotic Latin writing. Modern Western activists may be disturbed at how few of the texts end with two men walking hand in hand into the sunset. Rape, incest, and gay-bashing do come up in this book. Still, Spanish-language scholars should fall in love with this book as thoroughly as English-language scholars have fallen in love with Eve Sedgwick's "Epistemology of the Closet." I would recommend that every gay Latino man, in the US or abroad, read this book.

However,I have a serious critique that I will later illustrate. You can tell that Richmond Ellis intends this book for a limited audience. He wants this book to sit in university libraries rather than be available to common fans of gay male writing. And that's a shame that he didn't see more potential in this book.

First, the cover is bland and has no artwork. Similar books like "Eminent Maricones" and "Reading the Ambiente" have vibrant covers that lure in readers. Had Richmond Ellis put a photo of a hot Latin guy on the cover, his book would fly off of store shelves.

Second, he translates Spanish into English throughout the text. But at one point, he's discussing a Latin American author who tried to hide a homoerotic moment by writing the details in another language. While Richmond Ellis translates the sentence, he never says the language is French. It's almost as if he assumes the readers are Romance language scholars and not your average monoglot American.

Third, principles from gay studies are left out in many areas. For example, he mentions two slaves who share fruit as a sexual metaphor, but never mentions the homoerotic, Chinese tale of the "shared peach." He describes a Westernized author who has a lover in Egypt and India and never compares that to E.M. Forster. Later, he describes how one man removes the sickly skin of an ill lover and never makes parallels to gay couples in the age of AIDS.

I have no solid proof of the author's race. However, he has a completely English name, he never identifies as Latino (or even mixed-race) in the book and on his university's website he "looks" white. So my guess is that he's an Anglo. I don't mean to wander into essentialist territory for no reason. My problem is that outside of the works he's analyzing, he rarely relies upon gay Latino support. In his intro chapter, he mentions Bleys, Molloy, and Williams Foster, all Anglo writers who write on gay Latin American topics. He also cites Lumsden, Lancaster, Murray, and other Anglo sociologists that discuss gay sexuality in Latin America. However, with the exception of brief mentions of Manrique and Bejel, he cites no gay Latino academics. There is no mention of Almaguer, Munoz, or Longres. Quiroga has written on many of the same authors as Richmond Ellis has, yet he never cites him once. I am somewhat concerned about the author's unconscious biases here.

Rating:
Summary: A briliant book! So why does the author limit his audience?
Review: Richmond Ellis posits that gay male Latin American autobiography differs from its Spanish counterpart in that homosexuality cannot be divorced from issues of race, gender, and politics. In this book, the author looks at several writers, most gay, but one straight, to examine this topic. The authors he selects are of various races (black, mestizo, European) and numerous nationalities (Cuban, Mexican, Argentinian, Chilean). Most importantly, he illustrates how both the right and the left in Latin American have oppressed gay men. The author uses "gay," "queer," and "homoerotic" selectively, but equally. He thus sidesteps the boring and tired essentialism vs. constructivism debate. He has a great chapter on the newly popular Reinaldo Arenas. Though others have already written great essays on Arenas (Sanchez Eppler, Manrique, Bejel), Richmond Ellis' addition is welcome and unplagiarized. This book is quite academic; however, everyday readers shouldn't be afraid to give it a try. The introductory chapter discusses Bom-Crioulo, the first homoerotic text in Latin American writing, as well as Kiss of the Spider Woman. So, in ways, this is a veritable encyclopedia of male homoerotic Latin writing. Modern Western activists may be disturbed at how few of the texts end with two men walking hand in hand into the sunset. Rape, incest, and gay-bashing do come up in this book. Still, Spanish-language scholars should fall in love with this book as thoroughly as English-language scholars have fallen in love with Eve Sedgwick's "Epistemology of the Closet." I would recommend that every gay Latino man, in the US or abroad, read this book.

However,I have a serious critique that I will later illustrate. You can tell that Richmond Ellis intends this book for a limited audience. He wants this book to sit in university libraries rather than be available to common fans of gay male writing. And that's a shame that he didn't see more potential in this book.

First, the cover is bland and has no artwork. Similar books like "Eminent Maricones" and "Reading the Ambiente" have vibrant covers that lure in readers. Had Richmond Ellis put a photo of a hot Latin guy on the cover, his book would fly off of store shelves.

Second, he translates Spanish into English throughout the text. But at one point, he's discussing a Latin American author who tried to hide a homoerotic moment by writing the details in another language. While Richmond Ellis translates the sentence, he never says the language is French. It's almost as if he assumes the readers are Romance language scholars and not your average monoglot American.

Third, principles from gay studies are left out in many areas. For example, he mentions two slaves who share fruit as a sexual metaphor, but never mentions the homoerotic, Chinese tale of the "shared peach." He describes a Westernized author who has a lover in Egypt and India and never compares that to E.M. Forster. Later, he describes how one man removes the sickly skin of an ill lover and never makes parallels to gay couples in the age of AIDS.

I have no solid proof of the author's race. However, he has a completely English name, he never identifies as Latino (or even mixed-race) in the book and on his university's website he "looks" white. So my guess is that he's an Anglo. I don't mean to wander into essentialist territory for no reason. My problem is that outside of the works he's analyzing, he rarely relies upon gay Latino support. In his intro chapter, he mentions Bleys, Molloy, and Williams Foster, all Anglo writers who write on gay Latin American topics. He also cites Lumsden, Lancaster, Murray, and other Anglo sociologists that discuss gay sexuality in Latin America. However, with the exception of brief mentions of Manrique and Bejel, he cites no gay Latino academics. There is no mention of Almaguer, Munoz, or Longres. Quiroga has written on many of the same authors as Richmond Ellis has, yet he never cites him once. I am somewhat concerned about the author's unconscious biases here.