Portal de Periódicos da CAPES

?Entiendes?: queer readings, Hispanic writings

1996; Association of College and Research Libraries; Volume: 33; Issue: 05 Linguagem: Inglês

10.5860/choice.33-2635

1943-5975

Comparative Literary Analysis and Criticism

Questions of Homosexuality-Questions of Identity and Community <Entiendes?: literally "Do you understand?"; figuratively "Are you queer?"By giving this collection of critical essays, the first of its kind, a question for a title, we are not only making a gesture of respect toward those Spanishspeaking lesbians and gays who use the term themselves (including the Comunidad Gay de Madrid, who named their newsletter ~Entiendes?); we are also alluding to the radically open nature of a field which is only just emerging into visibility and whose very existence poses a number of questions (see Foster).One such question is the relation between homosexualities in Spain and in Spanish America.Here it is important to note and to regret that there are no historical studies for Spanish-speaking nations comparable to those which exist for Britain and the United States.It is for this reason that we include, later in the introduction, brief accounts of some aspects of lesbian and gay history in the Spanish-speaking world.What is more, the very concept of nationality is called into question by the prevalence of exile, whether forced or voluntary, among those writers who have identified as lesbian or gay.Representative of these are Cuban Reinaldo Arenas, living and dying in the United States; Spanish novelist Juan Goytisolo leaving Franco's Spain for Paris and North Mrica; Mexican Sara Levi-Calderon pressured to leave Mexico City for San Francisco by her scandalized family; and Cristina Peri Rossi forced to leave Uruguay for Barcelona.If the writers and performance artists treated in this volume have a home or a nation it is not a geographical territory but rather the multiple and varied forms of the Spanish language itself.