The Cross-Dressed Caribbean: Writing, Politics, Sexualities (New World Studies) - Softcover

Softcover

ISBN 10: 0813935237 ISBN 13: 9780813935232

Publisher: University of Virginia Press, 2014

Synopsis

Studies of sexuality in Caribbean culture are on the rise, focusing mainly on homosexuality and homophobia or on regional manifestations of normative and nonnormative sexualities. The Cross-Dressed Caribbean extends this exploration by using the trope of transvestism not only to analyze texts and contexts from anglophone, francophone, Spanish, Dutch, and diasporic Caribbean literature and film but also to highlight reinventions of sexuality and resistance to different forms of exploitation and oppression.

Contributors:

Roberto del Valle Alcalá, University of Alcalá * Lee Easton, Sheridan College Institute of Technology and Advanced Learning * Odile Ferly, Clark University * Kelly Hewson, Mount Royal University * Isabel Hoving, Leiden University * Wendy Knepper, Brunel University * Carine Mardorossian, University at Buffalo, SUNY * Shani Mootoo * Michael Niblett, University of Warwick * Kerstin Oloff, Durham University * Lizabeth Paravisini, Vassar College * Mayra Santos-Febres, University of Puerto Rico, Río Piedras * Paula Sato, Kent State University * Lawrence Scott * Karina Smith, Victoria University * Roberto Strongman, University of California, Santa Barbara * Chantal Zabus, University of Paris 13

About this title

About the Author:

Maria Cristina Fumagalli is Professor of Literature at the University of Essex, U.K.; Bénédicte Ledent is Professor of English at the University of Liège, Belgium; Roberto del Valle Alcalá is Assistant Professor of English at the University of Alcalá, Spain.

Review:

This book reveals in a powerful way that the Caribbean, often criticized and represented as macho, hyper-masculine, violently homophobic, and sexually restrictive has in fact given gender and sexual transgression a prominent if not defining role in national and regional culture and history. In addition, The Cross-Dressed Caribbean illustrates that cross-dressing and other gender transgressions are often but hardly always about queer sexuality, and they are almost alwayspart of a negotiation with or struggle against patriarchy and colonial/postcolonial oppression."

(Leah Rosenberg, University of Florida)

The collection as a whole demonstrates forcefully the central place of gender transgression in Caribbean cultures past and present. Moreover, it highlights productively the extent to which cross dressing is always crucially overdetermined.

(Jane Funke Wasafiri Issue 83)

About this edition

• Publisher: University of Virginia Press
• Publication date: 2014
• ISBN 10: 0813935237
• ISBN 13: 9780813935232
• Binding: Paperback
• Number of pages: 320
• Editor: Fumagalli Maria Cristina, Ledent Bénédicte, Del Valle Alcalá Roberto