Sexualidades Disidentes en la Narrativa Cubana Contemporánea ‐ by Valladares‐Ruiz, Patricia

Valladares-Ruiz, Patricia (2012) Sexualidades Disidentes en la Narrativa Cubana Contemporánea, Tamesis ( Woodbridge), vii + 199 pp. £49.95 hbk. Employing a loose combination of social and literary analysis, Sexualidades disidentes aims to trace recent changes in the presentation of sexual minorities in Cuban literature. It focuses in particular on the mutually subversive relationship between representations of alternative sexualities and the dominant model of Cuban identity: the macho and heterosexual national-revolutionary male. While stimulating and informative, the monograph nevertheless suffers from an ad hoc and largely atheoretical approach. Valladares-Ruiz begins with a genealogy of alternative sexualities in Cuba, focusing on nationalistic elements. To that end, socio-literary events, such as when José-Augustín Caballero's 1791 periodical published claims that effete homosexuals could not fight for Cuba's freedom, through to the Castro regime's puritanical campaigns against important, but homosexual, authors (like Lezama Lima and Virgilio Piñera), are used to illustrate the long-standing conflict between patriotic ideals and sexually diverse realities. Building on this historical sketch, the second chapter asks how to best analyse sexual minorities in Cuba. Liberally drawing on Judith Butler, Homi Bhabha and Michel Foucault, Valladares-Ruiz argues against the wholesale application of theories of sexuality created in and for societies with large protest movements to a country with no history of militancy for the rights of alternative sexualities. To underscore her point, the author presents the recent public discourse on sexual minorities emanating from CENESEX (National Centre for Sexual Education), a regime-affiliated entity run by Mariela Castro Espín (daughter of Raúl Castro, Cuba's leader), which espouses a top-down, medicalised approach to transsexuals and sexual education. That said, the post-1990 literary boom of the novísimo authors includes a number of LGBQT narratives, some of which exclude the national/socialist element altogether. Chapter 3 investigates the social conditions of this trend, such as the shortage of paper caused by the economic contraction of the nineties, which led to a resurgence of anthologies and literary magazines that were cheaper to publish than novels. To this Valladares-Ruiz adds the recent success of Cuban authors in foreign book markets and literary competitions, permitting some writers to bypass Cuba's shortages and censors. Building on this social context, Valladares-Ruiz then undertakes a literary analysis of sexual minorities as they appear in narratives from the novísimos. Be it Jorge Ángel Pérez's story of a gay man's affair with José Martí (Cuba's national hero), Pedro Juan Gutiérrez's exploration of poverty and sexual minorities in Havana or José Félix León's portrait of an HIV-positive gay man's affair in Berlin, Valladares-Ruiz highlights how the nation intrudes on sex, gender and desire. The influence may be direct, through social and legal pressures, or indirect, via hegemonic definitions of manhood (violent, dominant, and penetrating) or even through the nation's very absence, an omission that Valladares-Ruiz claims to be subversive in a literature that has been profoundly marked by Cuba's struggles for national self-determination. The final chapter does much the same for lesbian identities. Starting from the literary fate of lesbians to choose between suicide and self-denial, as seen in Mercedes Santos Moray's ‘El monte de Venus’, Valladares-Ruiz again traces the shift from a nation-heavy narrative towards one that excludes it altogether, focusing on women and their relationships, as in Ena Lucía Portela's ‘Una extraña entre las piedras’. These works further stand out for their ambivalence towards labelling: whereas male-centred stories rely heavily on slang such as maricón and loca to describe homosexuals, terms such as muchacha or lesbiana are far less present in woman-focused narratives. Valladares-Ruiz concludes that contemporary Cuban authors have created a narrative space for alternative sexual identities that can be surprisingly free of the overbearing, heteronormative, patriotic ideal. Nevertheless, these spaces are almost entirely in the realm of intimate relationships, even though depictions of sexual minorities are no longer destined to silence or suicide, their common location in the private sphere offers no position from which public struggles for the recognition of alternative sexual identities can be launched. In its political impotence the contemporary narrative is, Valladares-Ruiz maintains, sadly in line with broader Cuban reality. Overall, while Valladares-Ruiz offers a stimulating narrative of her own, the book suffers from an atheoretical approach, which neither connects to existing paradigms nor proposes its own. Despite generously citing Cuban scholars, as well as famous theorists, Valladares-Ruiz lacks a coherent framework for interpreting sex, gender and desire in Cuba, opting for an ad hoc approach that makes it difficult to judge her work. This is a shame, as Valladares-Ruiz's thorough knowledge of Cuban writing could have provided strong contributions to southern theories of sexualities, ensuring the pertinence of this otherwise fascinating piece of scholarship.

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