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  • Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression
  • Jessica Labbé
Lourdes Torres and Immaculada Pertusa, eds. Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression. Philadelphia: Temple UP, 2003. vi + 279 pp.

In Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression, editors Lourdes Torres and Immaculada Pertusa seek out the connections between the works of lesbian authors, artists, theorists, and historical figures in Spain, Latin America, and the United States. These eclectic and intriguing essays grapple with many of the most pressing issues facing queer/lesbian, feminist, immigrant, Hispanic, and Latino/a studies today. Torres and Pertusa organize the anthology into subject headings central to the queer experience, such as “coming out,” desire, resistance, and race. The most striking feature of this anthology is the vast terrain it traverses; identifying and discussing forms of specifically lesbian creativity and subversive performance, the essays provide insight into queer [End Page 284] history, intersections of experience, and oppression. Though such a diverse and sweeping body of work may potentially appear unfocused and overly ambitious, the way in which Tortilleras sets up a dialogue among different types of creative work, cultures, and nations establishes valuable new frames for studies in this field.

Most authors in this anthology seek to understand and complicate concepts of oppression and expression. Wilfredo Hernández and Sherry Velasco focus on the persecution of homosexuals under the Francoist regime in Spain and trace out the effects of tyrannical ideologies and edicts on the lives and literature of Spanish lesbians. Catrióna Rueda Esquibel, taking her cue from a similar history of oppression in Mexican culture, outlines the ways in which Chicana lesbian authors build empowering histories to subvert repressive patriarchal forces. Intersections of historical injustices also provide a framework for Lourdes Torres, who aligns with feminists of color who seek to identify the “intersectionality of oppressions” (228). She contends that Emma Pérez’s Gulf Dreams depicts violence as the site at which Chicanas “experience and resist multiple and simultaneous oppressions” (229). Salvador C. Fernández, however, argues that Terri de la Pena’s story “Goodbye Ricky Ricardo, Hello Lesbianism” and her novel Margins capture the sexual liberation and sociopolitical consciousness of many Chicana lesbians.

Immaculada Pertusa and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes build on the concept of intersectionality by investigating the indeterminacy of the queer experience. Pertusa explores the ambiguity of being “out of the closet” in Spanish culture through Carme Riera’s short fiction. La Fountain-Stokes, however, attempts to resolve undefined queer literary heritage by advocating a “more active or sympathetic reading” (60) of potentially queer texts in an effort to recover the previously-overlooked heritage of lesbian desire in Puerto Rican writing. Karina Lissette Cespedes and María Claudia André discuss lesbian identity in terms of performance and film. Cespedes claims that Alina Troyano’s stage persona, Carmelita Tropicana, “record[s] and perform[s] the lesbian body” (156) and effectively captures the Cuban-American exilic memory. Similarly, André argues that Bemberg’s film Yo, La Peor de Todas presents the fluidity of gender and sexuality and “dismantles the ideological parameters that hinder the production of new modes of feminine representation” (166).

A number of the articles featured here focus on significant women authors such as Ana Maria Moix, Cherríe Moraga, and Christina Peri Rossi. Nancy Vosburg and Gema Pérez-Sánchez read Moix’s depictions of voicelessness and silence in terms of identity-formation and political tyranny and resistance. While Vosburg argues that the ambiguity of Moix’s silences transforms the reader into a voyeur and highlights veiled identities and desires, Pérez-Sánchez claims that Moix’s “webs of silences” assert a political position that condemns the silencing of women (91).Regina M. Buccola, Christina Sharpe, and Elisa Garza delve into Moraga’s representation of sexual violence and lesbian desire, her struggles with race, and her rejection of Anzaldúa’s metaphoric borderlands. Janis Breckenridge analyzes the distinctly lesbian thematic and structural elements of Christina Peri Rossi’s fiction, while Sara E. Cooper examines how Rossi’s “The Witness” uses the gay family to “explore the ideas of exile, utopia, marginalization, [and] patriarchal infiltration” (176). [End Page 285]

Tortilleras certainly sets the...

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