They Dream Not of Angels but of Men: Homoeroticism, Gender, and Race in Latin American Autobiography

Overview

"A very exciting work, not only clear and articulate but often dramatic, which will be of interest to specialists and nonspecialists alike. . . . Ellis's scholarship is sound and his insights are often brilliant. He succeeds in articulating a sort of  'epic of the oppressed' in a concise and highly readable manner."--Emilio Bejel, University of Colorado, Boulder

"Exactly what the field is lacking. Innovative, creative, and scholarly, Ellis's is an insightful and well-researched analysis of representations of gay-male identity in Latin America that intertwines other structures of identity, such as race, politics, and class, and that examines diverse Latin American life-writings."--Librada Hernández, Los Angeles Valley College

In a pioneering study of male homoeroticism and gay-male identity in Latin American autobiographical writings, Robert Ellis draws upon a diverse group of writers who situate the homoerotic in a variety of contexts, highlighting the ways in which not only male homoeroticism but also male homoerotic practice and gay-male identity are affected by Latin American conceptions of masculinity and femininity, race, and social class.

The first book to take life-writings as a primary means for exploring the lives of homoerotically inclined and gay Latin American men, They Dream Not of Angels but of Men is also the first to look at the interrelationship of homoeroticism, gender, and race in Latin America. Each chapter is an intriguing study of a different way of reading the sexually oppressed within a wider social context, including slavery, immigration, imperialism, fascism and communism, and AIDS. Ellis breaks from traditional studies of gay men by showing how male homoeroticism can function as an expression both of resistance and oppression, especially through the dynamics of Latin American machismo. One of his important discoveries is that homosexuality in Latin America is constructed differently and is therefore experienced and known differently than in North America and Europe.

Among the writers included are many whose voices were until recently silenced in their own culture and in academic studies of the area; they range from the late colonial period to twentieth-century Argentina, Chile, Cuba, Mexico, and Peru.

Robert Richmond Ellis is professor of Spanish at Occidental College.

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