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

Susana Chavez-Silverman (Editor), Librada Hernandez (Editor)

Book Description

Publication Date: November 16, 2000

In this dynamic collection of essays, many leading literary scholars trace gay and lesbian themes in Latin American, Hispanic, and U.S. Latino literary and cultural texts. Reading and Writing the Ambiente is consciously ambitious and far-ranging, historically as well as geographically. It includes discussions of texts from as early as the seventeenth century to writings of the late twentieth century.
    Reading and Writing the Ambiente also underscores the ways in which lesbian and gay self-representation in Hispanic texts differs from representations in Anglo-American texts. The contributors demonstrate that—unlike the emphasis on the individual in Anglo- American sexual identity—Latino, Spanish, and Latin American sexual identity is produced in the surrounding culture and community, in the ambiente. As one of the first collections of its kind, Reading and Writing the Ambiente is expressive of the next wave of gay Hispanic and Latin scholarship.

Editorial Reviews

Review

"North American and European queers have assigned themselves the roles of 'universal' queer subjects. Reading and Writing the Ambiente insightfully challenges that bias. This volume joins and significantly contributes to an emergent wave of queer critique that is calibrated to look beyond the borders that queer theory has set up for itself."—José Esteban Muñoz, author of Disidentifications: Queers of Color and the Performance of Politics

"Reading and Writing the Ambiente will be of interest to scholars of Spanish, Latin American, and Latino literatures and cultural studies, as well as to scholars in queer studies beyond the geographical and linguistic boundaries of Hispanism."—Amy Kaminsky, University of Minnesota

From the Publisher

Included in this book are essays by Emilio Bejel Yvonne Yarbro-Bejarano Emilie L. Bergmann Robert Richmond Ellis Rosemary Geisdorfer Feal David William Foster Librada Hernández Elizabeth Rosa Horan Robert Mckee Irwin Harry Vélez Quiñones Susana Chávez-Silverman Carmen Tisnado Sherry Velasco

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Product Details

• Paperback: 376 pages
• Publisher: University of Wisconsin Press; 1 edition (November 16, 2000)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0299167844
• ISBN-13: 978-0299167844
• Product Dimensions: 9 x 6 x 0.8 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.1 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 2.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (1 customer review)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #2,034,143 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

5 of 12 people found the following review helpful:

2.0 out of 5 stars Sexuality studies applied to Spanish-language writing, March 17, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Reading and Writing the Ambiente: Queer Sexualities in Latino, Latin American, and Spanish Culture (Hardcover)

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.