Synopses & Reviews
With Gay Cuban Nation, Emilio Bejel looks at Cuba's markedly homoerotic culture through writings about homosexuality, placing them in the social and political contexts that led up to the Cuban Revolution. By reading against the grain of a wide variety of novels, short stories, autobiographies, newspaper articles, and films, Bejel maps out a fascinating argument about the way in which different attitudes toward power and nationalism struggle for an authoritative stance on homosexual issues. Through close readings of writers such as José Martí, Alfonso Hernández-Catá, Carlos Montenegro, José Lezama Lima, Leonardo Padura Fuentes, and Reinaldo Arenas, whose heartbreaking autobiography, Before Night Falls, has enjoyed renewed popularity, Gay Cuban Nation shows that the category of homosexuality is always lurking, ghostlike, in the shadows of nationalist discourse. The book stakes out Cuba's sexual battlefield, and will challenge the homophobia of both Castro's revolutionaries and Cuban exiles in the States.
Synopsis
With Gay Cuban Nation, Emilio Bejel looks at Cuba's markedly homoerotic culture through writings about homosexuality, placing them in the social and political contexts that led up to the Cuban Revolution. By reading against the grain of a wide variety of novels, short stories, autobiographies, newspaper articles, and films, he maps out a fascinating argument about the way in which nationalism and other institutions of power struggle for an authoritative stance on homosexual issues. Through close readings of writers such as José Martí, Ofelia Rodríguez Acosta, Carlos Montenegro, José Lezama Lima, Severo Sarduy, Achy Obejas, Sonia Rivera-Valdés, and Reinaldo Arenas, Gay Cuban Nation shows ultimately that the specter of homosexuality is always lurking in the shadows of nationalist discourse.
Description
Includes bibliographical references (p. 235-245) and index.
About the Author
Emilio Bejel is a professor of Spanish American literature and literary theory at the University of Colorado at Boulder. In addition to seven collections of poetry and five books in Spanish, Bejel is the author of
José Lezama Lima, Poet of the Image.
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction
PART I—THE BUILDING OF A CONDEMNATION
ONE An Apostolic Paradox
Colonizing the Effeminate Man
The Specter of the Manly Woman
TWO The Positivist Production of the Pederast
PART II—NEW SPACES AND NEW SUBJECTIVITIES
THREE The Feminist, the Garzona, and the Gay Man
Life Decrees
In the Night of the World
FOUR Another Positivist (Trans)Formation
FIVE A Prison-House of Womanless Men
PART III—REVOLUTIONARY NORMATIVITIES AND THEIR EFFECTS
SIX Creative Redemption in a Providential Teleology
SEVEN A Queer Response to Postmodern Simulation
EIGHT The (Auto)Biography of a Furious Dissident
NINE Attempting a Difficult Rectification
TEN (Un)Veiling Machismo
The Masks of Máscaras
The Search for an Elided Voice
Writing Lesbian Desire
ELEVEN Gender Trouble in the Land of the Butterflies
TWELVE Crossing Gender and National Boundaries
Dissemination, Consumerism, and New Stereotypes
Nostalgia for the New Home
An Aesthetics of Destabilization
Bibliography
Index