Unrequited Love and Gay Latino Culture : What Have You Done to My Heart?

by Contreras, Daniel T.

• ISBN13: 9781403964687
• ISBN10: 1403964688
• Format: Hardcover
• Copyright: 2005-01-15
• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan

Summary

This book is about valuing the sensations of loss and melancholy and the longing to transform the painful into something meaningful, the junky into something valuable. Drawing on a wide range of material from art, theater, music, and literature in order to bring something to the losses of history and culture, Contreras argues that historical memory is embedded in these forms of art and can perhaps take us "somewhere better than this place." The critical energies in the book come from Chicana/o and queer studies. Contreras views unrequited love as a utopian space of possibility and transformation. The discussion includes The Boys in the Band , Arturo Islas, Paris is Burning , Judy Garland, and Kiss of the Spider Woman .

Author Biography

Daniel Contreras is Assistant Professor, Colby College.

Table of Contents

Acknowledgments	vii
Introduction: "What Have You Done to My Heart?": Unrequited Love and The Question of Utopia	1	(22)
1. The Boys in the Band: Camp and the Heartbreak of Race	23	(28)
2. "Letting Go of What you Love": Literature, Popular Culture, and Chicano Heartache	51	(24)
3. Utopian Drag and Gender Politics	75	(24)
4. Kiss: Utopian Romance and Manuel Puig's Spider Woman	99	(32)
Conclusion: Somewhere Better Than This Place/Nowhere Better Than This Place	131	(6)
References	137	(6)
Index	143