Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing
Edited by Lázaro Lima and Felice Picano
University of Wisconsin Press. 206 pages, $22.95
THE WRITERS in this new anthology of short stories are doubly disenfranchised: first, by the dominant national discourse, which continues to use racial and ethnic categories when defining what it means to be an American; and second, by a tacit understanding within the Latino community that heterosexual relations are better than homosexual ones. In this vein, the seventeen stories included here challenge these obstacles by celebrating a group of voices that joyously affirm, “We’re here, we’re Latino and queer, get used to it!”
The name of the volume, Ambientes: New Queer Latino Writing, attests to the importance of language for queer Latino writers as it annuls linguistic hierarchies through its Spanish title and English subtitle.
