Sedore’s interview with the author: “‘Everything I Wrote Was Truth’: An Interview with José Antonio Villarreal,” Northwest Review 39, no. José Antonio Villarreal, Pocho (New York: Anchor Books, 1989), 95.Īlexander Doty, Flaming Classics: Queering the Film Canon (New York: Routledge, 2000), 2. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves. These keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. In this way, she expands and enriches the Chicana lesbian canon considerably and creates a discourse on the ways in which characters that are not overtly marked as gay or lesbian can and do contribute to a discourse on nonnormative gender and sexuality. She argues that Chicana lesbian writing has a long trajectory in the history of Chicana/o literature that goes beyond those texts where clearly marked lesbian identities are present. In each, Esquibel focuses on the ways in which intimate relationships between girls/women are homoerotic. In her excellent analysis of Chicana “lesbian” works of fiction, With Her Machete in Her Hand: Reading Chicana Lesbians (2006), Catrióna Rueda Esquibel examines Chicana novels that center on young female protagonists: The House on Mango Street, by Sandra Cisneros (1984) The Last of the Menu Girls, by Denise Chávez (1986) Margins, by Terri de la Peña (1992) and Gulf Dreams, by Emma Pérez (1996). Such locations present numerous opportunities for examining queer identities. As narratives that center on the maturation of a young protagonist and her/his relationship to the society in which she/he resides, novels of this genre often include experiences that shape gender and sexual development and, in turn, identity. The bildungsroman has a long and ubiquitous presence in the history of literature worldwide.

Gulf Dreams by Emma Pérez