Pride Month Reading List

By our Marketing, Sales, and Copyediting Fellow David Juarez

In the early hours of June 28, 1969, a police raid on the Stonewall Inn, a well-known gay bar in Greenwich Village, sparked a violent riot between LGBTQ citizens and the New York police. This event became a significant milestone in LGBTQ history and the catalyst for gay and lesbian liberation movements across the nation. Since then, June has come to represent Pride Month in the United States, a celebration of LGBTQ identity and a commemoration of LGBTQ history, figures, and achievements.

LGBTQ identity transcends national boundaries, of course, and this post highlights some of the amazing scholarship from UT Press related to LGBTQ representation, identity, and politics across the globe. These books offer different perspectives on how LGBTQ identities intersect with racial, ethnic, and cultural differences, how we read media, how media reads us, and how great scholarship challenges us to understand the people and the world around us. 

1

Beyoncé in Formation: Remixing Black Feminism by Omise'eke Natasha Tinsley (forthcoming 2018)

Making headlines when it was launched in 2015, Omise’eke Natasha Tinsley’s undergraduate course “Beyoncé Feminism, Rihanna Womanism” has inspired students from all walks of life. In Beyoncé in Formation, Tinsley now takes her rich observations beyond the classroom, using the blockbuster album and video Lemonade as a soundtrack for vital next-millennium narratives. Woven with candid observations about her life as a feminist scholar of African studies and a cisgender femme married to a trans spouse, Tinsley’s “Femme-onade” mixtape explores myriad facets of black women’s sexuality and gender. Her chapters on nontraditional bonds culminate in a discussion of contemporary LGBT politics through the lens of the internet-breaking video “Formation,” underscoring why Beyoncé’s black femme-inism isn’t only for ciswomen. In the tradition of Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist and Jill Lepore’s bestselling cultural histories, Beyoncé in Formation is the work of a daring intellectual who is poised to spark a new conversation about freedom and identity in America.

2

Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism by Uriel Quesada, Letitia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (2015)

In the last three decades of the twentieth century, LGBT Latinas/os faced several forms of discrimination. To disrupt the cycle of sexism, racism, and homophobia that they experienced, LGBT Latinas/os organized themselves on local, state, and national levels, forming communities in which they could fight for equal rights while simultaneously staying true to both their ethnic and sexual identities. Yet histories of LGBT activism in the 1970s, 1980s, and 1990s often reduce the role that Latinas/os played, resulting in misinformation, or ignore their work entirely, erasing them from history. Queer Brown Voices is the first book published to counter this trend, documenting the efforts of some of these LGBT Latina/o activists. Comprising essays and oral history interviews that present the experiences of fourteen activists across the United States and in Puerto Rico, the book offers a new perspective on the history of LGBT mobilization and activism. The activists discuss subjects that shed light not only on the organizations they helped to create and operate, but also on their broad-ranging experiences of being racialized and discriminated against, fighting for access to health care during the HIV/AIDS epidemic, and struggling for awareness.

3

Queer Beirut by Sofian Merabet (2014)

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Gender and sexual identity formation is an ongoing anthropological conversation in both Middle Eastern studies and urban studies, but the story of gay and lesbian identity in the Middle East is only just beginning to be told. Queer Beirut is the first ethnographic study of queer lives in the Arab Middle East. Drawing on anthropology, urban studies, gender studies, queer studies, and sociocultural theory, Sofian Merabet’s compelling ethnography suggests a critical theory of gender and religious identity formations that will disrupt conventional anthropological premises about the contingent role that society and particular urban spaces have in facilitating the emergence of various subcultures within the city. From 1995 to 2014, Merabet made a series of ethnographic journeys to Lebanon, during which he interviewed numerous gay men in Beirut. Through their life stories, Merabet crafts moving ethnographic narratives and explores how Lebanese gays inhabit and perform their gender as they formulate their sense of identity. He also examines the notion of “queer space” in Beirut and the role that this city, its class and sectarian structure, its colonial history, and religion have played in these people’s discovery and exploration of their sexualities. In using Beirut as a microcosm for the complexities of homosexual relationships in contemporary Lebanon, Queer Beirut provides a critical standpoint from which to deepen our understandings of gender rights and citizenship in the structuring of social inequality within the larger context of the Middle East.

4

The New Gay for Pay: The Sexual Politics of American Television Production by Julia Himberg (2017)

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Television conveys powerful messages about sexual identities, and popular shows such as Will & Grace, Ellen, Glee, Modern Family, and The Fosters are often credited with building support for gay rights, including marriage equality. At the same time, however, many dismiss TV’s portrayal of LGBT characters and issues as “gay for pay”—that is, apolitical and exploitative programming created simply for profit. In The New Gay for Pay, Julia Himberg moves beyond both of these positions to investigate the complex and multifaceted ways that television production participates in constructing sexuality, sexual identities and communities, and sexual politics. Himberg examines the production stories behind explicitly LGBT narratives and characters, studying how industry workers themselves negotiate processes of TV development, production, marketing, and distribution. She interviews workers whose views are rarely heard, including market researchers, public relations experts, media advocacy workers, political campaigners designing strategies for TV messaging, and corporate social responsibility department officers, as well as network executives and producers. Thoroughly analyzing their comments in the light of four key issues—visibility, advocacy, diversity, and equality—Himberg reveals how the practices and belief systems of industry workers generate the conceptions of LGBT sexuality and political change that are portrayed on television. This original approach complicates and broadens our notions about who makes media; how those practitioners operate within media conglomerates; and, perhaps most important, how they contribute to commonsense ideas about sexuality.

5

Queer Bergman: Sexuality, Gender, and the European Art Cinema by Daniel Humphrey (2013)

One of the twentieth century’s most important filmmakers—indeed one of its most important and influential artists—Ingmar Bergman and his films have been examined from almost every possible perspective, including their remarkable portrayals of women and their searing dramatizations of gender dynamics. Curiously however, especially considering the Swedish filmmaker’s numerous and intriguing comments on the subject, no study has focused on the undeniably queer characteristics present throughout this nominally straight auteur’s body of work; indeed, they have barely been noted. Queer Bergman makes a bold and convincing argument that Ingmar Bergman’s work can best be thought of as profoundly queer in nature. Using persuasive historical evidence, including Bergman’s own on-the-record (though stubbornly ignored) remarks alluding to his own homosexual identifications, as well as the discourse of queer theory, Daniel Humphrey brings into focus the director’s radical denunciation of heteronormative values, his savage and darkly humorous deconstructions of gender roles, and his work’s trenchant, if also deeply conflicted, attacks on homophobically constructed forms of patriarchic authority. Adding an important chapter to the current discourse on GLBT/queer historiography, Humphrey also explores the unaddressed historical connections between post–World War II American queer culture and a concurrently vibrant European art cinema, proving that particular interrelationship to be as profound as the better documented associations between gay men and Hollywood musicals, queer spectators and the horror film, lesbians and gothic fiction, and others.

Here are other titles that might also be of interest:

• New Maricon Cinema: Outing Latin American Film (2016) by Vinodh Venkatesh
• Queer Issues in Contemporary Latin American Cinema (2003) by David William Foster
• Psycho-Sexual: Male Desire in Hitchcock, De Palma, Scorsese, and Friedkin (2013) by David Greven
• What Makes a Man?: Sex Talk in Beirut and Berlin (2015) by Rashid Al-Daif and Joachim Helfer, translated by Ken Seigneurie and Gary Schmidt
• Derek Jarman and Lyric Film: The Mirror and the Sea (2004) by Steven Dillon
• Wicked Cinema: Sex and Religion on Screen (2014) by Daniel Cutrara
• Argentine, Mexican, and Guatemalan Photography: Feminist, Queer, and Post-Masculinist Perspectives (2014) by David William Foster

David Juarez in his element, surrounded by books.

Marketing and Copyediting Fellow David Juarez has accepted a position as editorial assistant at the University of Notre Dame Press in South Bend, Indiana. David has been a key contributor to the University of Texas Press copyediting and marketing departments during his fellowship. We have appreciated his insightful contributions, his delightful sense of humor, and his willingness to discuss all things Marvel Universe with Senior Editor Jim Burr. Congratulations and let's wish David continued success in scholarly publishing!

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Top 9 Queer Latin American Films

In Spanish, 'maricón' is a derogatory term for gay men. In his new book New Maricón Cinema: Outing Latin American Film, Vinodh Venkatesh reclaims the word to profess pride and not hate. Presenting a comprehensive overview of recent queer cinema in Latin America, this pathfinding volume identifies a new vein of filmmaking that promotes affective

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relationships between viewers and homo/trans/intersexed characters. We asked Professor Venkatesh to list his top queer films from contemporary Latin America.

Top 9 Queer Latin American Films
By Vinodh Venkatesh

Latin American cinema has in the past decade or so undergone a renewal in how issues of sex and gender difference are portrayed. Audiences familiar with the films of the 60s and onwards will remember how rare it was to see a member of the LGBTQ community represented on screen. Even rarer was to see said characters not be the butt of jokes and ridicule. While the '90s did provide some LGBTQ-positive films such as Fresa y chocolate (1993) and No se lo digas a nadie (1998), it really isn’t until the turn of the century that we begin to see films that directly engage with queer characters and issues in a comprehensive and thoughtful way. In other words, the past decade and a half has witnessed a boom in Latin American queer cinema that cannot be ignored.

Below you will find a list of films that merit viewing, discussion, and even study. Some are by now well known to academics and social activists working on LGBTQ issues. Others are a little more esoteric, either due to their limited release or simple newness. I initially thought of compiling a “Top 10” list of queer Latin American films, but soon realized the limitations of such an exercise. By what measure would I be rating these films? Personal preference? Engagement with queer issues? Quality of acting and script? After all, each of these films engages queer issues and characters in a myriad of ways, and each should be celebrated for doing so. I decided to come up then with an unranked list of movies, presented in no particular order, but that will be of interest to a diverse set of audiences due to their content, genre, and narrative style. Thinking of something serious? XXY will give you food for thought. Comedy? Lokas is delightfully funny. In the mood for romance? You’ll be hard-pressed to not shed a tear when the end credits of Contracorriente start to roll. I study most of the films listed below in New Maricón Cinema: Outing Latin American Film, in addition to some of the classics from the Latin American canon such as El lugar sin límites and the oeuvre of Jaime Humberto Hermosillo.

Contracorriente (2009)

Contracorriente (2009), the directorial debut of Peruvian filmmaker Javier Fuentes-León, has won Audience Awards at Sundance, Chicago, Miami, and Cartagena. The film recounts the archetypal love triangle of gay man (Santiago)-closeted man (Miguel)-unsuspecting wife (Mariela) in a quiet fishing village, somewhere in Latin America, exploring issues such as religion, death, and homophobia, all within a magical ghost story. It comes as no surprise, then, that some reviews call Contracorriente “Brokeback Mountain meets Ghost.” Tatiana Astengo plays the female lead, while Cristian Mercado and Manolo Cardona deliver poignant performances as lovers that must negotiate their own desires and society’s expectations of love, sex, and gender.

Contracorriente takes place in a coastal village anchored in traditions—one such tradition is the ritual giving away of the body to the ocean, so that the deceased may rest in peace. The film delves into the magical when Santiago drowns in the undertow after an angry discussion with Miguel over the future of their relationship. He comes back as a ghost that only Miguel can see, his spirit in limbo as his body is stuck in the ocean bed. Fuentes-León’s film follows Miguel and Santiago as they come to terms with themselves and search for inner peace.