Customer Reviews

Mexican Masculinities (Cultural Studies of the Americas)

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Who says the academic discipline known as "queer theory" can't be applied to non-English literatures? Here McKee Irwin uses a sprinkle of Foucault, Butler, Sedgwick, and Michael Kimmel to discuss masculinity in Mexican literature. His biggest contention is that although others have theorized that the interracial heterosexual dyad or the cross-class dyad is the most striking feature of the Mexican literary canon, one very important dyad in this genre is that between men, especially sexual dynamics between men. He finds a way to discuss the masculine, the "effeminate," and other gendered and sexualized contours of this literary history.

This book, at times, tries to have its cake and eat it too. On the one hand, he says that Mexican homophobia has been rampant and writers could not talk of homosexuality openly. On the other hand, he says the nation didn't really become anti-gay until the "Famous 41" incident. When examining text, he states that contemporary readers would never have thought of certain features of a book as homoerotic, then he goes on to list all the ways these books are homoerotic.

It is interesting that this author posits that Octavio Paz was heterosexual whereas Ilan Stavans, a straight Hispanicist, suggested that Paz was bisexual or gay.

Gender and sexuality are heavily intertwined, obviously. However, homophobic readers may not like how gay-focused this is. In fact, gay readers, and especially gay readers of Hispanic literature, may also be misled by the title. Perhaps McKee Irwin should have called this "Mexican Male Sexualities" or "Mexican Male Homosexualities." This would not get confused with Stephen Murray's "Latin American Male Homosexualities."

This book is intended for serious literary critics or comparative literature majors. This is not a book you can just hand to someone who's interested in Mexican men generally. Additionally, McKee Irwin covers Mexico proper. There is no suggestion here that Mexican and Mexican-American canons are one in the same.