While not on the scale of their European and North American counterparts, gays and lesbians have become increasingly open and visible in urban Latin America, with large public displays recently held in Buenos Aires, Mexico, Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. This increased visibility is forcing the general public to come to terms with what has, until now, been a silent part of their population. This book takes a personal look at the activities of Latin America's homosexual community, and the varying perception of it by the populace as a whole. c. Book News Inc.

From its sweaty beats to the pulsating music on the streets, Latin/o America is perceived in the United States as the land of heat, the toy store for Western sex. It is the territory of magical fantasy and of revolutionary threat, where topography is the travel guide of desire, directing imperial voyeurs to the exhibition of the flesh. Jose Quiroga flips the stereotype upside down: he shows how Latin/o American lesbians and gay men have consistently eschewed notions of sexual identity for a politics of intervention. In Tropics of Desire, Quiroga reads hesitant Mexican poets as sex-positive voices, he questions how outing and identity politics can fall prey to the manipulations of the state, and explores how invisibility has been used as a tactical tool in opposition to the universal imperative to come out. Drawing on diverse cultural examples such as the performance of bolero and salsa, film, literature, and correspondence, and influenced by masters like Roland Barthes, Walter Benjamin and a rich tradition of Latin American stylists, Quiroga argues for a politics that denies biological determinism and cannibalizes cultural stereotypes for the sake of political action.

Celebrating the centennial of his birth, the first-ever U.S. publication of Philippine writer Nick Joaquin’s seminal works, with a foreword by PEN/Open Book Award–winner Gina Apostol A New York Times Book Review Editor's Choice Nick Joaquin is widely considered one of the greatest Filipino writers, but he has remained little-known outside his home country despite writing in English. Set amid the ruins of Manila devastated by World War II, his stories are steeped in the post-colonial anguish and hopes of his era and resonate with the ironic perspectives on colonial history of Gabriel García Márquez and Mario Vargas Llosa. His work meditates on the questions and challenges of the Filipino individual’s new freedom after a long history of colonialism, exploring folklore, centuries-old Catholic rites, the Spanish colonial past, magical realism, and baroque splendor and excess. This collection features his best-known story, “The Woman Who Had Two Navels,” centered on Philippine emigrants living in Hong Kong and later expanded into a novel, the much-anthologized stories “May Day Eve” and “The Summer Solstice” and a canonic play, A Portrait of the Artist as Filipino. As Penguin Classics previously launched his countryman Jose Rizal to a wide audience, now Joaquin will find new readers with the first American collection of his work. Introduction and Suggestions for Further Reading by Vicente L. Rafael For more than seventy years, Penguin has been the leading publisher of classic literature in the English-speaking world. With more than 1,700 titles, Penguin Classics represents a global bookshelf of the best works throughout history and across genres and disciplines. Readers trust the series to provide authoritative texts enhanced by introductions and notes by distinguished scholars and contemporary authors, as well as up-to-date translations by award-winning translators.

Focusing on the representations of multicultural themes involving Euro- and Afro-Brazilians, other immigrants, and indigenous peoples, in the rich tradition of the Brazilian fictional feature film, Robert Stam provides a major study of race in Brazilian culture through a critical analysis of Brazilian cinema. 136 photos.