[Download] "Eroticism and Sexual Transgression in Dos Mujeres and Amora: Shaping the Voice of Lesbian Fiction in Mexico (Estudios y Confluencias)" by Confluencia: Revista Hispanica de Cultura y Literatura # eBook PDF Kindle ePub Free
eBook details
- Title: Eroticism and Sexual Transgression in Dos Mujeres and Amora: Shaping the Voice of Lesbian Fiction in Mexico (Estudios y Confluencias)
- Author : Confluencia: Revista Hispanica de Cultura y Literatura
- Release Date : January 22, 2011
- Genre: Social Science,Books,Nonfiction,Reference,
- Pages : * pages
- Size : 111 KB
Description
Sara Levi Calderon's novel, Dos mujeres (1990), is arguably one of the most erotic works of fiction ever produced by a woman writer in Latin America, and it is also one of the most openly lesbian in nature. It relates the coming out story of a middle-aged, upper-class Jewish woman in Mexico City who leaves a traditional family structure and develops a relationship with a much younger woman artist. Most of the novel focuses on the difficulties encountered by the women as they attempt to form a relationship in a society that does not recognize the legitimacy of same-sex unions. Ultimately, it becomes a struggle for personal identity as the women begin to realize that they cannot continue to live in Mexico and define themselves through the roles traditionally assigned to them. In order to live openly as lesbians, they must exile themselves from their country and its patriarchal culture. (1) Amora (1989), by Rosamaria Roffiel, is quite another story. Although it is generally regarded as the first lesbian novel in Mexico, it made a quieter debut. It is also a powerful love story between women, but it lacks Dos mujeres' graphic descriptions of lesbian sex. Instead, it is firmly grounded in Mexico City's feminist subculture and takes on a collective nature as it traces the interconnectedness of a group of women who are searching for love, friendship, and a stronger sense of self. The protagonist-narrator acknowledges the difficulty of being a woman in a patriarchal culture, but takes a militant political stance about the need to remain in Mexico and fight for change. (2) Both novels deal with the notion of sexual transgression, but they differ markedly in their conceptualization of the feminine erotic. This leads us to question the role eroticism plays in each of the texts and how it engages the reader in issues related to the representation of feminine desire. It also induces us to look at how the books are marketed in Mexico, and what role sex plays in the selling of books to mainstream readers. These two areas of inquiry are interconnected in the case of Dos mujeres and Amora because they call attention to the problems lesbian writers face in a country whose literary marketplace is so deeply rooted in patriarchal values. Both novels seek to separate themselves from the dominant culture, but Dos mujeres creates a sense of private space shared by two women, whereas Amora is narrated in a more public space grounded in the notion of lesbian community. Both novels explore notions of space, language and the body, but Dos mujeres, by making lesbian sexuality visible through the use of fetishes and the illusion of masquerade, invites voyeuristic participation by male readers. In contrast, Amora operates with the understanding that readers will belong to an "insider" group of lesbians who already know what women do in bed together; thus, the mechanisms of lesbian sex do not need to be explained to "outsiders." How much can or should be said about the female body and its relationship to feminine desire becomes a central issue in both works, and it is tied, intentionally or not, to a free-market economy that measures a book's success by the number of readers it can attract. On a theoretical level, the discussion of feminine desire evokes a long-standing debate surrounding the problem of publishing truths about women's lives that could be appropriated and objectified by voyeuristic masculine readers. While some argue that women not only have the right but the imperative to write about their bodies and their sexual experiences in open and authentic terms, others claim that language cannot escape a phallocentric logic that positions the feminine in binary opposition to the masculine and subordinates it to male desire. (3) When dealing specifically with lesbian fiction, we must ask how the "I" in a literary text can speak as a woman who desires another woman without slipping into the "man's role" as it is prescribed through a heterosexual para