El Fulano and Patty Swan: Rhetorically Queering the Island in The Meaning of Consuelo

This article is an analysis of the novel The Meaning of Consuelo that resists commentary by book reviewers that the two queer characters are insignificant to the story. Instead, a rhetorical reading of the narrative progression of the novel finds that the title character’s sexual and ethnic identity formation parallels their narrative arcs, thus queering the novel itself. The resulting identities of these three characters is what Gloria Anzaldúa calls a new mestiza consciousness.