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· 57 ·· CHAPTER 4 · Lesbian-Themed Best Sellers and the Politics of Acceptance In chapter 2 I addressed the impact on the Spanish publishing business of globalization and the increasingly neoliberal values of Spanish citizens, arguably results of the nation’s integration into, first, the European Economic Community (1986) and then the European Union (1993). I argued that these factors shifted control of publication from local, intellectual editors to global conglomerates that placed greater emphasis on best sellers with the potential to appeal to a variety of markets. The political and economic incorporation of Spain into Europe also implied a liberalization of Spanish society, signaled in part by a greater acceptance of nonheteronormative practices. In this chapter, I examine the representation of lesbians in three bestselling novels. The novels in question—Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes (Beatriz and the heavenly bodies, Nadal Prize, 1998), Donde comienza tu nombre (Where your name begins, Odisea, 2004), and Una palabra tuya (A word from you, Biblioteca Breve Prize, 2005)—were groundbreaking in some senses, the first owing to its largely positive representation of lesbian and bisexual characters, the second for being the first novel published by a gay/ lesbian press to cross over to a mainstream bookstore, and the third for depicting the sexuality of the lowest strata of working women, garbage collectors . Still, I believe that the ways in which their authors write lesbian and bisexual women for a broad Spanish audience reveal the conditions under which mainstream heterosexual bourgeois readers are willing to accept lesbian sexuality, as well as the lingering prejudices that mark that acceptance. Global Bi and Lesbian Chic in Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes, by Lucía Etxebarría Lucía Etxebarría is not simply the author of best-selling novels; she is a media phenomenon, a superstar of the book business who has fashioned 58 LESBIAN-THEMED BEST SELLERS herself as a spokesperson of the counterculture. She is especially critical of the effects that the beauty business (cosmetics, cosmetic surgery, diet aids) have on the female body and psyche, but she also points out the hypocrisy of bourgeois culture in regard to drugs and alcohol, and she is an ardent foe of homophobia. She maintains a Web site, and she has had her own page on ClubCultura.com, followed by a blog, where she espouses her opinions on sex, drugs, fashion, feminist issues, and the cult of celebrity. Etxebarría’s own celebrity adds weight to these opinions, and that celebrity skyrocketed after the publication of Beatriz y los cuerpos celestes, winner of the Nadal Prize in 1998.1 This novel, in which the young female narrator declares her love for two different women within the first two chapters, also gave Etxebarría—who has made very public her sexual preference for men—an entrance into the gay book market, to the extent that all of her works are now featured prominently in gay bookstores and on gay-related Web sites, as well as in mainstream bookstores. Indeed, the response to the novel shows that although the narrator and protagonist of the novel, Beatriz, might well believe that “el amor no tiene género” (love has no gender), as the book jacket informs us (in contrast to her love interests , Cat, a “lesbiana convencida” [committed lesbian], and Mónica, a “devorahombres compulsiva” [compulsive man-eater]), Spanish readers are not so gender-blind regarding sex. Thus, when Beatriz won the Nadal Prize, the headline of the article in the Spanish daily El País read: “Young Writer Lucía Etxebarría Receives the Nadal with a Novel about Sexual Initiation,” followed immediately by the subtitle “‘Beatriz and the Heavenly Bodies’ Includes Lesbian Relations with Madrid as a Backdrop” (Moret). The article goes on to assure the readers, in the words of one of the jurors for the prize, that “It’s not a lesbian novel, although there are lesbian elements. . . . The theme is more about how the family and a determined social setting can condition the love life and sex life of a person. It is also a hymn to the freedom to choose the kind of love you want.” The title of the newspaper piece in El Mundo—“The Nadal Prize Is Awarded to the Eroticism and ‘Poetic Charge’ of Lucía Etxebarría”—was actually preceded by the declaration that “the winner assures that her work will be polemical because her protagonist maintains lesbian relations and is also a drug addict ” (Maurell).2 The lesbian content...

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