Customer Reviews

Travesti: Sex, Gender, and Culture among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes (Worlds of Desire: The Chicago Series on Sexuality, Gender, and Culture)

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I found this book to be very well written and, in several instances, it made me long to return to my anthropological studies at NYU. Had I only been a curious reader I probably would have found this book brilliant, but my reading was shaded by the fact that I personally know many travestis in Salvador (Peruco, Xuxuca, Kit Mahoney, Angelica) and therefore found the exclusion of several things to be particularly odd.

The importance of having a basic understanding of the language and culture of a country in order to do fieldwork and understand anything in that country cannot be overstated, and the fact that Professor Kulick went into the "field" totally green must have put him at a significant disadvantage. This disadvantage would explain his cultural missteps and failure to see his "subjects" within the larger Brazilian context. The lack of contextualization is akin to discussing America's obesity problem without discussing the automobile, the microwave, women in the workforce, lack of school physical education programs, etc. A population teeming with 300-lb. people seems very strange indeed when not seen in context.

Though far more thorough than most researchers, it's incomprehensible to me that he barely discusses race/ color and class at all. It's important to note that nearly all travestis are negra (black) and mulata/ morena (brown) and come from the lowest social classes and everyone knows that, in Brazil, the primary contribution that negras and morenas are thought to offer society is their sexual services (mulata e pra transar, branca e pra casar).

It's also strange that there is hardly any discussion of religion and, being a gringo and all, Professor Kulick seems to look down on Candomble and tries to defend his new travesti friends by asserting that they are not "devotees" of the religion. All of the travestis that I know practice Candomble, but would never admit it to a prejudiced gringo who doesn't seem to understand the religion anyway. In fact, by ignoring Candomble, Professor Kulick missed a crucial element in understanding the place of the travesti in society. It is in the terreiro that Brazilians become accustomed to seeing men dressed as women and learn to respect their special status.

This book, though thoughtfully put together, lacks an understanding of Brazilian norms which would have made the work more complete. The knowledge that, for instance, Brazilians are used to mixture (e.g. being culturally/ racially mixed, practicing Candomble and Catholicism simultaneously) means that travestis are one of many hybrid classes in a highly hybridized nation.

Further, knowing what I know about baiano travestis, I am certain that they would not have allowed Professor Kulick to hang out with them if they didn't consider him to be one of them. It's clear to me in his writing that he greatly enjoyed spending time with the bichada and was "se sentindo" just as much as they were.

I was actually in the field in Salvador Bahia at the same time as Don Kulick was doing his fieldwork for this book, and I also read the manuscript before it was published. He and I have discussed at length various theoretical aspects of the book (I have a different interpretation of how gender works in Brazil). Knowing the accuracy of his ethnography as I do, I think this is one of the important books to have been published in anthropology and gender in recent years. It is also an engaging, insightful and fascinating read.

I write this review to counter some insinuating remarks I have just read here about Dr. Kulick and the nature of his fieldwork. Dr. Kuluck is a linguist; he studied Portuguese intensively when he arrived in Brazil and was very soon completely fluent. His understanding of Bahia slang--very much needed for any work on the streets--is superb. In order to get the in-depth ethnography that he did, he had to stay in the horrific tenement conditions in which many of the transvestites with whom he worked live in Salvador, he also stayed with them on the streets until late, recording conversations. As with most field situations, Dr. Kulick was quite fond of some of his informants, less so of others (as would be expected); as a gay man, he was neither a potential client nor boyfriend (since these are people who consider themselves 'straight'), a situation that, I believe, aided him in gaining the trust and acceptance of his informants. My impression was that, although he empathized with his informants in many ways, he certainly did not 'identify' with them.

The controversy this book has sparked speaks more to its breaking new ground than anything else. I highly recommend it.

Margaret Willson (author of "Dance Lest We All Fall Down: A Journey of Friendship, Poverty, Power and Peace")

I had the opportunity to read this manuscript before it was published, while taking a class with Prof. Kulick. My criticisms of it then still stand now...though I have in many ways only deepened my respect for the finer points of this work. I thoroughly applaud the way that Kulick attempts to make clear the way in which the travesti gender identity is a complexity of biological definition, social categorization, and personal identification. Certainly, the way in which Kulick has encouraged his subjects to share their understanding of gender and sexuality SO openly may help all gender theorists and anthropologists better take to task gender issues like these. As criticism, the book simply does not contextualize the travesti experience. Kulick mentions little and/or nothing about the outside understandings of travesti identity...or the ways in which the broader categories of Brazilian sexual identity might encourage the development of a travesti individual. As well, Kulick is almost TOO involved with his sources. I am certainly NOT preaching anthropological objectivity here (an impossible task) but felt that about 60% of the dialogue in the book was about Kulick's personal desire to "share" in the travesti experience and/or to be identified as an "insider," something which we could have figured out from a decisive, close-knit, introspection of the travesti culture.

Travesti is not a book for those looking for a cheap trill. Nor is it a book for the faint hearted. It is a study about a fringe element and that is rarely pretty. Violence, sex, robbery, death, drugs and unhappy relationships fill this book from front to back. The only reason I took away a point was the feeling that the author did get a tad too close to the subjects he was studying. I think he was trying too hard. Yet his results, the information and view points he was able to record, was amazing and really forced me to look at life and gender in a whole new fashion.

This is an extremely useful and popular text in anthropology of gender, sexuality and/or body classes. Although Kulick could have done even more to situate the travestis in broader Brazilian contexts (of race, class, gender, etc.), his detailed, rich accounts of the intimate lives and experiences of the travestis he grew to know are extremely engrossing and illuminating. The book offers a wealth of original, provocative data that students can use well to examine and challenge their own understandings of gender and sexuality categories. Gender, sexuality and transgender are simply very differently imagined and constructed in Brazil (at least among travestis) than in the US. Students report that this is one of their favorite ethnographies, and especially because of the wealth of original data, riveting informant narratives, and novel perspectives portrayed, it is one of my favorites, too.

Don Kulick provides an excellent example of anthropologists dealing with the tough issues of gender and sexuality research. He demonstrates how connected anthropologists become to those they study; and further challenges us to consider closeness, concern, and friendship with our informants as methodologies that speak not only to our own humanity as anthropologists but also to the humanity of our communities of study. I have used this book to teach introduction to cultural anthropology course and it is a perfect blend of theory, narrative, and insight which keeps students engaged and asking the difficult questions of conducting cultural anthropological research. I applaud Kulick and thank him immensely for his work! GET A COPY :) !

Very interesting book on how Brazilian Travestis' construct their gender due to their sexuality. The book arrived promptly.

I wasn't sure what to expect when I picked up Travesti. All I knew was that I would be in for a treat just by looking at the cover. Kulick who is an anthropologist who studied the lives transvestites in Brazil as he became friends with them he got all of the inside scoop and included it in his book. He talks about the travestis that come from Italy to do business in Brazil where these things are more acceptable. Some of the people he interviews talk about how they started in the business, they talk about the ups and downs of their jobs. I found some of the stories to be very graphic. The lives of these men are sometimes beyond their choice of living. Some of them believe they were born into it. The stories are very realistic and in some cases tragic. I wouldn't recommend this book to anyone whose clsed minded. However if you find it initeresting to read about the harsh realities of the world then this is the book for you.

the disparity between prof. kulick's earnestness towards his subjects and their bleak, frightening world make for great, grand humor, however unintentional. though i have some reservations about kulick's lack of scientific conclusions, i applaud his efforts. i found the descriptions (& gasp, photos!) of the travestis shooting industrial sillicon into their ahem, "pundas" memorable.

throughout the book i kept wondering what did the prostitutes think of Kulick? The author gives a few clues, but jezzus!

If never visited Brazil, the book projects the culture as high on the bizarre-scale in general, as it delves laboriously into the lives and physical-augmentation practices of transgendered sex-workers. Although on the surface enlightening, it could have taken fewer trees to produce the same somewhat go-nowhere-conclusions, and I found myself more willing to seek out volumes and sources used by the author as references into the study of trans-persons of various stripes. It appeared that the author was too overly imbued with his own gay (and possibly trans-) proclivities for this to serve as an objective sociological study. Perhaps he should write a "sensational" script for the screen. It could be done with minor revisions of the text-format, although I did appreciate his manipulation of phaseology.