REVIEWS | EXCERPT | CONTENTS | AUTHOR BIO | SUBJECT CATEGORIES
Latina and Latin American lesbian culture made visible
Tortilleras
Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression
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edited by Lourdes Torres and Inmaculada Perpetusa-Seva
"Finalmente, the hole in the canon has been filled by Tortilleras, a book as fierce as the women it chronicles from the 17th century Catalina Erauso who passes as a man in Peru to the 21st century writer extraordinaire and political activist in the U.S. Cherrie Moraga. Exelente!"
—Carmelita Tropicana is an Obie award winning Performance Artist and writer of I, Carmelita Tropicana - Performing Between Cultures
The first anthology to focus exclusively on queer readings of Spanish, Latin American, and US Latina lesbian literature and culture, Tortilleras interrogates issues of gender, national identity, race, ethnicity, and class to show the impossibility of projecting a singular Hispanic or Latina Lesbian. Examining carefully the works of a range of lesbian writers and performance artists, including Carmelita Tropicana and Christina Peri Rossi, among others, the contributors create a picture of the complicated and multi-textured contributions of Latina and Hispanic lesbians to literature and culture. More than simply describing this sphere of creativity, the contributors also recover from history the long, veiled existence of this world, exposing its roots, its impact on lesbian culture, and, making the power of lesbian performance and literature visible.
Excerpt
Reviews
"Tortilleras is a landmark collection. It fosters a necessary and meaningful dialogue between feminist scholars in U.S. Latina and Latin American studies grappling with questions of lesbian representation in literary and visual culture. Torres and Pertusa have compiled a timely volume that richly complicates previous debates and energetically maps new directions for the future. This most vital book shows how studies in gender and sexuality must lie at the heart of our work."
—Tiffany Ana Lopez, University of California, Riverside
"This anthology pushes us to think beyond the margins of repression in fiction and nonfiction queer literature and culture and art and film. Once you look through Tortilleras, you'll be compelled to look for the work these scholars are reviewing and see if your examination compares....[it] is the first anthology of its kind to open a vein and say, 'Here,' to our LGBT community, scholars, and students."
—Lambda Book Report
"...groundbreaking...pioneering in many ways...challenges patterns of marginalization, offering a fascinating, critical approach to the obscured and vital reality of Latina lesbian identity, agency, difference and otherness."
—Multicultural Review
"The most striking feature of this anthology is the vast terrain it traverses; ... Tortilleras establishes valuable new frames for study in this field."
—symploke
"[The book] is an important and innovative addition to this corpus... [it] will no doubt provoke new conversations and new research in a number of fields."
—The Arizona Journal of Hispanic Cultural Studies
Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction – Lourdes Torres
Part I: coming Out/Covering Up
1. From the Margins to the Mainstream: Lesbian Characters in Spanish Fiction (1964-79) – Wilfredo Hernández
2. Carme Riera: (Un)Covering the Lesbian Subject or Simulation of Coming Out? – Inmaculada Pertusa
3. Tomboy Tantrums and Queer Infatuations: Reading Lesbianism in Magali García Ramis's Felices Días, Tío Sergio – Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
4. Coming-Out Stories and the Politics of Identity in the Narrative of Terri de la Peña – Salvador C. Fernández
Part II: (Re)presenting Lesbian Desire
5. Silent Pleasures and Pleasures of Silence: Ana María Moix's "Las Virtudes Peligrosas" – Nancy Vosburg
6. Reading, Writing, and the Love that Dares Not Seak Its Name: Eloquent Silences in Ana María Moix's Julia – Gema Pérez-Sánchez
7. Outside the Castle Walls: Beyond Lesbian Counterplotting in Cristina Peri Rossi's Desastres Íntimos – Janis Breckenridge
8. "He Made Me a Hole!" Gender Bending, Sexual Desire, and the Representation of Sexual Violence – Regina M. Buccola
Part III: Sites of Resistance
9. Bomberas on Stage: Carmelita Tropicana Speaking in Tongues Against History, Madness, Fate, and the State – Karina Lissette Cespedes
10. Empowering the Feminine/Feminist/Lesbian Subject Through the Lens: The Representation of Women in María Luisa Bemberg's Yo, la Peor de Todas – María Claudia André
11. The Lesbian Family in Christina Peri Rossi's "The Witness": A Study in Utopia and Infiltrations – Sara E. Cooper
12. Chicana Lesbianism and the Multigenre Text – Elisa A. Garza
Part IV: Racialized Lesbianisms
13. Interracial Lesbian Erotics in Early Modern Spain: Catalina de Erauso and Elana/o de Céspedes – Sherry Velasco
14. Violence, Desire, and Transformative Remembering in Emma Pérez's Gulf Dreams – Lourdes Torres
15. Learning to Live Without Black Familia: Cherríe Moraga's Nationalist Articulations – Christina Sharpe
16. Shameless Histories: Chicana Lesbian Fictions Talking Race/Talking Sex – Catrióna Rueda Esquibel
About the Contributors
About the Author(s)
Lourdes Torres is Associate Professor of Latin American/Latino studies at De Paul University.
Inmaculada Perpetusa-Seva is Assistant Professor of Spanish at the University of Kentucky.
Contributors: María Claudia André, Janis Breckenridge, Regina M. Buccola, Karina Lisette Cespedes, Sara E. Cooper, Catrióna Rueda Esquibel, Salvador C. Fernández, Elisa A. Garza; Wilfredo Hernández, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Gema Pérez-Sánchez, Christina Sharpe, Sherry Velasco, Nancy Vosburg, and the editors.