Ambientes_New Queer Latino Writing Read online

  AMBIENTES

  New Queer Latino Writing

  Edited by

  LÁZARO LIMA

  and

  FELICE PICANO

  The University of Wisconsin Press

  1930 Monroe Street, 3rd Floor

  Madison, Wisconsin 53711–2059

  uwpress.wisc.edu

  3 Henrietta Street

  London WC2E 8LU, England

  eurospanbookstore.com

  Copyright © 2011

  The Board of Regents of the University of Wisconsin System

  All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any format or by any means, digital, electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise, or conveyed via the Internet or a website without written permission of the University of Wisconsin Press, except in the case of brief quotations embedded in critical articles and reviews.

  1 3 5 4 2

  Printed in the United States of America

  A version of “Magnetic Island Sueño Crónica” by Susana Chávez-Silverman first appeared as “Currawong Crónica” in Chroma: A Queer Literary and Arts Journal 6 (Spring 2007), reprinted by permission of the author; “Haunting José” by Rigoberto González first appeared in Men without Bliss (Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 2008), reprinted by permission of the publisher; a version of “Shorty” by Daisy Hernández was first published in Sinister Wisdom 74: Latina Lesbians (2008), reprinted by permission of the author; “Arturo, Who Likes to Shave His Legs in the Snow” by Lucy Marrero first appeared in Alchemist Review 30 (April 2007), reprinted by permission of the author; “Kimberle” by Achy Obejas first appeared in Another Chicago Magazine 50 (July 1, 2010), reprinted by permission of the author; “I Leave Tomorrow, I Come Back Yesterday” by Uriel Quesada first appeared as “Salgo mañana, llego ayer” in Lejos, tan lejos (San José: Editorial Costa Rica, 2004), translated into English by Amy McNichols and Kristen Warfield, reprinted by permission of the publisher; “La Fiesta de Los Linares” by Janet Arelis Quezada first appeared in Women Writers (Winter 2001), www.women writers.net, reprinted by permission of the author; “Porcupine Love” by tatiana de la tierra first appeared as “Amor de puercoespín” in Dos orillas: Voces en la narrativa lésbica (Barcelona: Egales Editorial, 2008), edited by Minerva Salado, and in English in Two Shores: Voices in Lesbian Narrative (Barcelona: Grup E.L.L.Es, 2008), edited by Minerva Salado, reprinted by permission of the author; “Dear Rodney” by Emanuel Xavier first appeared in If Jesus Were Gay and Other Poems (Bar Harbor, ME: Queer Mojo/Rebel Satori Press, 2010), reprinted by permission of the publisher.

  Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data

  Ambientes: new queer Latino writing / edited by Lazaro Lima and Felice Picano.

  p. cm.

  ISBN 978-0-299-28224-0 (pbk.: alk. paper)

  ISBN 978-0-299-28223-3 (e-book)

  1. Hispanic American gays—Fiction.

  2. American fiction—Hispanic American authors.

  3. Homosexuality in literature. 4. Gays’ writings, American.

  I. Lima, Lázaro. II. Picano, Felice, 1944—

  PS647.G39A46 2011

  813’.6080868073—dc22

  2010041228

  Contents

  Cover

  Title Page

  Copyright Page

  Editors’ Note: The Name of las Cosas

  Preface

  Acknowledgments

  Ambientes

  Introduction: Genealogies of Queer Latino Writing

  Kimberle

  Pandora’s Box

  Shorty

  Puti and the Gay Bandits of Hunts Point

  Porcupine Love

  The Unequivocal Moon

  Dear Rodney

  This Desire for Queer Survival

  La Fiesta de Los Linares

  Malverde

  Aquí viene Johnny

  Haunting José

  Imitation of Selena

  Magnetic Island Sueño Crónica

  I Leave Tomorrow, I Come Back Yesterday

  Six Days in St. Paul

  Arturo, Who Likes to Shave His Legs in the Snow

  Contributors

  Editor’s Note

  The Name of las Cosas

  Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing seeks to provide a timely and representative archive of queer Latino literary and cultural memory in order to enact a more inclusive “American” literary canon that can apprehend the present and the future of queer Latino literary practice. We have assembled a diverse and representative sample of contemporary queer Latino writing in order to provide a source of pleasure for readers as well as a resource for instructors and students who have too often been deprived of this crucial though underanalyzed component of national literary culture.

  Consistent with our belief that Spanish is not a foreign language in the United States, we have not italicized words in Spanish. Those words that do appear in the anthology in italics, whether in Spanish or not, have been italicized by the authors and usually connote emphasis but not a different linguistic register or the notion that Spanish is a foreign language in this country. In keeping with standard Spanish grammatical usage, the singular “Latino” or plural “Latinos” in the preface and the introduction refer to both sexes and allow us to avoid the graphically more sluggish “Latina/o,” Latina/os,” or “Latin@s.” In doing so we also suggest the obvious: to believe that graphic characters can reform inequality, linguistic or otherwise, is a fatuous proposition if structural inequalities are not concomitantly addressed. Further, taking Spanish seriously in the United States requires understanding its structures, its speakers, the colonial legacies that haunt both, and why Spanish continues to be classed as “inferior.” When we consider that the United States is the third-largest Spanish-speaking country in the world (out of twenty-one countries whose official language is Spanish plus the U.S. territory of Puerto Rico), then we must confront the language issue with urgency and creativity.

  In both the preface and the introduction we refer to Latinos as persons of Latin American ancestry living in the United States. Certainly, Spanish is not the only language in Latin America, but regrettably majority culture still incorrectly racializes and classes many Latinos as “foreign,” and, too often, as just Spanish speaking (read: “Mexican”). When we consider that, aside from Mexican and Central American migration and immigration to the United States, Brazilians constitute the third-largest migrant or immigrant group, then it becomes expedient to include Brazilians—who often have to learn Spanish and, eventually, English to enter local economies—under the admittedly less than precise but necessary rubric “Latino.”

  We received many fine submissions for this anthology in both English and Spanish. The best of both were included in Ambientes. Those submitted in Spanish have been translated into English in order to entice a broader readership into seeking out the Spanish originals, perhaps even encouraging them to learn the other unofficial national language. As readers demand more of queer Latino writing and cultural production, we hope that the Latino Brazilian experience also makes its way into the futures of Latino literary and cultural production.

  Finally, we hope you enjoy reading Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing. Please visit the book’s website for research ideas, additional readings, links to authors’ websites, as well as teaching suggestions and class projects based on Ambientes: www.myambientes.com.

  Preface

  FELICE PICANO

  The two young men at the back of the library had been there early, and they dawdled after everyone else at my reading and talk had left. They’d been silent and attentive thro
ughout, almost extra-alert, but now that they were standing before me they relaxed and they gushed. Among the things they said in their enthusiasm was this: “We’re so proud to have someone of Latino extraction as an openly out gay writer.”

  I looked at them more closely. This close up, I could see that both appeared to be Latino. Clearly, they thought that I, with my vowel-filled name and my large brown eyes, was also Latino. And, in a way, I am. My father was born in the town of Itria in an area of Central Italy about forty miles east of Rome, the area known as Latium, from which the Latin tongue took its name. So, in fact, he, and I through him, was an original Latino.

  Only I’m not Latino the way those young men thought: they felt proud of having a Latino gay man so out, so prominent, to represent them. A few generations ago, I might have been one of those young men, attending a rare reading of an Italian American author. Those certainly were rare in the past, and people of Italian heritage were mostly unassimilated into the American mainstream until the middle of the last century, in a way similar to how many younger Latinos feel to not be part of our wider culture today. As the result of discovering an unsolved murder in my family—through being a writer—I’ve been delving into my own family history. In New England in the 1920s and early 1930s, anti-Italian sentiment reached an all-time high, especially after the farce of the Sacco-Vanzetti trial. Elderly people in Rhode Island told me in interviews that as teens they would have to go to church and school in groups no smaller than ten because they were so often physically attacked. While still a youth, I personally remember experiencing anti-Italian prejudice, including at an Ivy League school. During an interview for a Woodrow Wilson graduate scholarship at Princeton in 1964, as I was discussing Henry James’s middle-period fiction with one professor, another interrupted to ask if I was sure I wouldn’t rather be a barber.

  So, clearly, correcting those young men who thought I was Latino made no sense at all at the time, and I immediately changed the subject to a more general one. But in the months and years after that encounter, more readers, other writers, and several interviewers have all made the same assumption or outright asked if I was Latino. Why they did so has become increasingly clear. There was, there is, an exploding gay population with Iberian heritage, and they’re on the lookout for role models, seeking people to identify with, to help build a queer Latino community and culture.

  That’s one very important reason why this anthology exists: to provide those two young men and other readers, writers, and interviewers with queer writers of quality who will provide significant writings about the U.S. Latino queer experience. Writers like Achy Obejas, Elías Miguel Muñoz, Susana Chávez-Silverman, and Emanuel Xavier, writers whose work—whether in stories, novels, poetry, memoirs, or plays—are, in effect, leading the way, writers who are represented here by an intriguing and wide-ranging variety of shorter fiction each representing a fresh Latino voice, looking from a queer Latino perspective into a slice of our life.

  Ah, but the knowledgeable and the academic (not always the same thing) will instantly reply that we already have Latino gay literature. Look at Jaime Manrique, whose wonderful novel about Colombian emigrants living in Queens, Latin Moon in Manhattan, was published in 1992. And before him, there was the Argentinean novelist Manuel Puig, whose Kiss of the Spider Woman and Who Betrayed Rita Hayworth? were a unique collusion between his Argentine culture and Hollywood. And what of the more dour Cubano novelist, Reinaldo Arenas?

  And, how many people are aware that even before them we had John Rechy? John is a Tejano, originally from El Paso/Ciudad Juárez. Rereading his now-classic gay novels City of Night and Numbers, it’s clear how the elements of the Latino culture that he inescapably grew up with are reflected in and deeply inform the adventures, the choices, and yes also the ethics of his often nameless “youngmen” protagonists. Their outsider status is a double one, queer and Latino, providing an enhanced, more brightly colored distancing lens from which he so brilliantly examines, exalts, and critiques the Manhattan and Los Angeles gay life of his time. Also, let’s not forget that at least one of his books, The Miraculous Day of Amalia Gómez (1991), is directly about the Cal-Mex way of life. Then there’s also an entire generation of Chicana and Chicano writers who have paved the way for contemporary queer Latino culture and writing, not to mention the important work of Nuyorican writers and poets such as Emanuel Xavier in his collection Americano, or the many other Nuyorican writers who came before him.

  All well and good, I answer. But it’s obviously not enough. In fact, when Manrique wrote his Eminent Maricones, he focused on Puig, Lorca, Arenas, and himself! A short and, yes, eminent list. But obviously not enough, because on March 4, 2007, a certain Johnny Díaz wrote on that book’s Amazon.com website: “Where are all the Hispanic American gay writers? I don’t mean those from Central and South America, I mean those in the United States?” And it was obviously not enough for those sincere and proud young men at my reading, or they wouldn’t be out there eager to co-opt me and my work.

  Besides, it’s the twenty-first century, and it’s time that a twenty-first-century literature about being queer in America existed and acknowledged the large number of Latinos in this country. Latinos, although not necessarily queer, are all over our contemporary popular culture: Jennifer Lopez, Ricky Martin (recently “out”), Daddy Yankee, and Santana in popular music; Osvaldo Golijov and Astor Piazzolla in classical music; Ana Alicia, Chita Rivera, and Fernando Bujones in dance; Selma Hayek, Elizabeth Peña, Cameron Diaz, Andy García, Benjamin Bratt, George Lopez, and Jimmy Smits on the silver screen and stage, plus many more behind the cameras, and that’s just off the top of my head. American performance art, painting, and sculpture are all brightened and enriched by Latino artists as well. These artists all bring to their work passion and temperament, individuality and uniqueness, high spirits and deep longing, a certain spiciness and a playful mischief, a kind of old-time glamour and a dark intensity of purpose, not to be found otherwise.

  But for contemporary “Latin” literature of any kind, we seem to have to go directly to Central or Latin America to writers whose work must be translated—Gabriel García Márquez, Laura Esquivel, Paul Coelho, and Carlos Fuentes, most popular among them. None of them write about being Latino in the United States. Few of them even mention, never mind explore, what it means to be gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgendered. Isn’t it time we had our own? While we recognize the works of Judith Ortiz Cofer, Junot Díaz, Sandra Cisneros, Gloria Anzaldúa, and Cherrie Moraga, only the last two Chicanas really address queer issues. Indeed, Chicana and Chicano queers have led the way but we need more. Quite simply, there is still an absolute need for art that is representative and responsive to the Latino queer experience.

  What the young authors collected in Ambientes bring to us are many different ways of being queer, of being American, of being Latino. Intriguingly, the writers hail from all over the landscape. Some were born in the United States, some in Mexico, others in Central America, others still in the Caribbean. Their writing addresses what it means to be a queer Latino: not only how the color of your skin, or your accent, or any of a dozen of perceived differences affect not only how you may be treated—demonized, vilified, adored, iconized—but also how you come to perceive yourself. And what happens when, because of your sexual desire, you add yet another layer of difference on top of that.

  Of course there are many other themes explored in these stories. If you’re hoping for one story, or one author, to sum up what it all means, you are in for a disappointment. However, if you can accept, enjoy, and even revel in difference then you are in for a treat. These stories range from the poetry of Janet Arelis Quezada’s “La Fiesta de Los Linares” and Lucy Marrero’s “Arturo, Who Likes to Shave His Legs in the Snow” to Daisy Hernández’s deliciously funny “Shorty.” If you prefer the so-called exotic, then Myriam Gurba’s “Malverde” and tatiana de la tierra’s “Porcupine Love” fill the bill, while Steven Cordova’s “Six Days in St. Paul” belong
s in any U.S. queer fiction anthology. Just as you’re about to conclude that queer Latino literature is one thing, the next story you read forces you to totally reconsider, since it’s all so rich.

  So much to read. So much to think of. I hope you’ll be surprised and impressed by the works included here and impelled to demand more.

  Acknowledgments

  In preparing this book, Felice and I had tremendous support and cooperation from many writers, friends, colleagues, and institutions. We are grateful to have labored so intensely and productively with the writers whose work is included in Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing, as well as those whose work could not be included in this anthology for reasons of space, timing, or deadlines. The University of Wisconsin Press’s support for the project was exemplary and we were fortunate to have, and consistently count on, the fine stewardship of Raphael Kadushin. Raphael’s reputation as a fantastic editor, writer, and reader preceded him; we can only concur, add to the accolades, and simply say, gracias. Also at the University of Wisconsin Press, we’d like to thank Katie Malchow for her able assistance and Sheila McMahon for her spectacular editorial skills. The Press secured two thoughtful external reviewers and we are grateful for their invaluable suggestions.

  It has been a pleasure for me to direct the Program in Gender and Sexuality Studies at Bryn Mawr College. The Program and the Department of English helped bring Felice Picano to campus, where we had the opportunity to talk and refine the project through the thoughtful feedback of many motivated and simply brilliant students, especially the program’s ever intrepid representative, Rebecca Farber. Many colleagues and friends were responsive with thoughtful suggestions and constructive criticism. I especially wish to thank Anne Dalke, Pim Higginson, Bethany Schneider, Rosi Song, Kate Thomas, Michael Tratner, and Sharon Ullman. The Bryn Mawr, Haverford and Swarthmore Tri-college Consortium’s Mellon Queers of Color group has provided sustained support and I am fortunate to count on the intellectual camaraderie of Israel Burshatin, Homay King, Luciano Martínez, Jerry Miller, and Hoang Nguyen. I especially wish to thank Israel for the contributions to the field he helped to carve and the doors he continues to hold open. My involvement with the DC Queers Theory Group has also served as a resource for critical input and lively engagement. I especially wish to thank Marilee Lindemann, Dana Luciano, Robert McRuer, Ricardo Ortíz, and Tom Ratekin for the vibrant community they’ve helped create in the capital. David Conway, Rob Falk, and Gina Livermore both encouraged and distracted me at all the right moments and the book is better for it. I am also grateful to Cristina Beltrán, Oliva Cardona, Miguel Díaz-Barriga, Margaret Dorsey, Dara Goldman, Elena Gorfinkel, Zilkia Janer, Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Lydie E. Moudileno, José Esteban Muñoz, Israel Reyes, Juana María Rodríguez, Richard T. Rodríguez, Azade Seyhan, Todd Shepard, Nicolás Shumway, Heather Sias, Ben. Sifuentes-Jáuregui, Richard Torchia, Antonio Viego, and Tina Zwarg for their continued intellectual generosity and sheer good will. I wish to acknowledge the Office of the Provost at Bryn Mawr College, in particular Provost Kim Cassidy, for helping to secure funding for the project.