Encyclopedia
Discussion
 |
Latin American Art and Literature |
|
Latin American machismo has limited glbtq expression in the arts. Consequently, Latin American Art by glbtq artists often portrays a desire for both sexual and political liberation.
By contrast, Latin American Literature has included gay and lesbian characters since before the turn of the twentieth century, but is easy for anglophones to misunderstand because traditional Latin American constructions of sexuality differ markedly from the medico-legal tradition familiar in North American and European glbtq history. |
||
| Reinaldo Arenas (1943-1990) was persecuted for his homosexuality by the Castro government he had once championed. Nevertheless, he challenged all types of ideological dogmatism and was unapologetic and explicit when he wrote about his own homosexual escapades. | ||
| Luis Caballero Holguín (1943-1995), one of the most significant Latin American painters of the second half of the twentieth century, considered his homosexuality a fundamental component of his artistic expression. | ||
| Roberta Close (b.1964), a Brazilian model, actress, and television performer, is one of the world's most famous transsexual celebrities. Her tell-all autobiography Muito Prazer, Roberta Close (Much Pleasure, Roberta Close, 1998) was a best-seller in Brazil. | ||
Léonor Fini (1908-1996) is an Argentinian-born artist who is associated with the European Surrealist movement. Her work's emphasis on female power and autonomy can be seen as a response to the patriarchal assumptions of Surrealism.
|
||
Frida Kahlo (1907-1954), a bisexual Mexican artist, was a masterful exponent of cross-dressing, deliberately using male drag to project power and independence.
|
||
José Lezama Lima (1910-1976) is an important Cuban writer and a major Latin-American literary figure. He included problematic homosexual passages in his two best-known novels.
|
||
| Jaime Manrique (b. 1949) has written novels, short stories, poetry, and works of nonfiction. His fiction often addresses the homophobia and oppressive machismo of his native Colombia. | ||
Gabriela Mistral (1889-1957), a Chilean educator, journalist, feminist, diplomat, and Nobel laureate, celebrated women and motherhood in poems and essays that are frequently homoerotic.
|
||
Manuel Puig (1932-1990) included homosexual themes and motifs in a number of his eight novels, and in the best known of them, Kiss of the Spider Woman (1976), homosexual desire is central to the fiction.
|
||
| Luis Zapata (b. 1951) is Mexico's most successful and productive gay writer. Between 1975 and 1990, he published four novels and a novelette in which the main character is either denotatively or connotatively gay. | ||
| Nahum B. Zenil (b. 1947) emerged on the international art scene in the 1980s as part of a generation of Mexican artists who were re-examining the artistic traditions of their country. Zenil's art, mostly autobiographical, has consistently acknowledged and utilized his identity as a gay man to define his artistic personality. | ||
Dustin Lance BlackAcademy Award-winning screenwriter Dustin Lance Black (b. 1974) has quickly established himself as both an accomplished filmmaker and a committed activist.
Howard Moss (1922-1987), one of the leading figures of American letters in the latter half of the twentieth century, is the author of a significant body of elegant, erudite, and urbane work, especially poetry.
Christine QuinnChristine Quinn (b. 1966) is the first woman, the first openly gay person, and the first Irish-American to serve as the Speaker of the New York City Council.
| Slides: Jeff Sheng's "Don't Ask, Don't Tell" | ||
 Pearce and David. Seattle, Washington. 2010. |
||
|
Jeff Sheng is a Los Angeles-based artist who has devoted 2009 and 2010 to photographing gay, lesbian, and bisexual American military servicemembers who serve under the Don't Ask, Don't Tell (DADT) policy that requires them to keep their sexuality secret in order to avoid discharge. Sheng writes that "for me, these photographs speak upon the layers of silences that have permeated the United States' involvement in two major wars this past decade--the silences not just with sexuality, but towards the countless acts of bravery and unsung heroism by these unyielding men and women, who continue to fight and serve despite the circumstances, and whose heartbreaking invisibility in these so-called silent wars will hopefully one day be accounted for." |
||
| view slides | ||
| LGBT History Month: Recommended Reading | ||
|
Spotlight: Military Service Lesbians and gay men have often served honorably in their nations' armed services, and some have been prominent military leaders. Officially-sanctioned homophobia has often made such service difficult and sometimes impossible. America's Don't Ask, Don't Tell policy and some other countries' exclusion of gay and lesbian service members continue to devastate many lives today. |
||
| Video Review | ||
 Gay Sex in the 70sGay Sex in the 70s is a compilation of the reminiscences of gay New Yorkers about the explosion of sexual freedom they experienced in New York's West Village and on Fire Island during the period between the Stonewall riots in 1969 and the emergence of AIDS in the early 1980s. The film's extensive use of archival photographs and footage and its effective storytelling make it a valuable documentary about gay sex in New York's most famous gay ghetto in the 1970s, but it fails to live up to the expectations created by its title by ignoring the minority gay communities that emerged elsewhere in New York during the same period. |
||
Louis XIIIKING OF FRANCE FROM 1610 TO 1643, 1601
Théodore Géricault19TH-CENTURY PAINTER AND CREATOR OF THE RAFT OF THE MEDUSA, 1791
T.S. EliotLEADING 20TH-CENTURY AMERICAN POET, WHOSE WORK IS HAUNTED BY HIS LOVE FOR A YOUNG FRENCHMAN, 1888
NOTABLE BRITISH ART HISTORIAN AND SOVIET SPY, 1907
Gloria AnzaldúaAMERICAN LATINA LESBIAN EDITOR AND WRITER, 1942
CONTROVERSIAL RADICAL FEMINIST KNOWN FOR HER VIGOROUS OPPOSITION TO PORNOGRAPHY, 1946
Scott HeimCRITICALLY ACCLAIMED WRITER OF GAY-THEMED NOVELS AND SHORT FICTION, 1966
Robert PatrickA FOUNDING FATHER OF GAY DRAMA IN AMERICA, 1937
William BeckfordAUTHOR AND CONNOISSEUR OSTRACIZED BECAUSE OF HIS HOMOSEXUALITY, 1760
RumiPERSIAN POET AND ORIGINATOR OF THE "WHIRLING DERVISH" ORDER OF SUFIS, 1207
GERMAN-BRITISH MEDICAL PRACTITIONER, PSYCHOLOGIST, AND WRITER, 1897
Truman CapoteWRITER WHO HELPED ESTABLISH THE HOMOSEXUAL WRITING STYLE OF THE 1950s AND 1960s, 1924
Johnny MathisENORMOUSLY FAMOUS AMERICAN PERFORMER AND RECORDING ARTIST, 1935
ITALIAN AVANT-GARDE COMPOSER WHO BROUGHT A POLYMORPHOUS SEXUALITY ONTO THE OPERATIC AND CONCERT STAGE, 1931
ONE OF THE FIRST TRANSSEXUALS TO TELL HER STORY PUBLICLY IN A MEMOIR, 1926
WIDELY EXHIBITED AMERICAN PHOTOGRAPHER, 1949
This feature lists people about whom glbtq.com has both entries and complete birth dates. Each person listed has made a significant contribution to or had a significant impact on glbtq culture or history. Most are gay, lesbian, bisexual, or transgender, though some are either heterosexual or cannot be adequately characterized using any of these labels.
learn more about glbtq contact us advertise on glbtq.com
glbtq™ and its logo are trademarks of glbtq, Inc.
This site and its contents Copyright © 2002-2010, glbtq, Inc.
research guide
editors & contributors
write the editor
Leighton had dismissed Major Witt's lawsuit in 2006, only to see his decision overruled in 2008 by the Ninth Circuit Court of Appeals, which ordered him to retry the case in light of Supreme Court rulings such as Lawrence v. Texas, which established a fundamental right to homosexual conduct, and with the burden of proof placed on the military to demonstrate that her presence harmed unit cohesion and morale, the government's justification for the ban on openly gay servicemembers.
In reversing his previous ruling, the judge hailed Witt for her role ". . . in a long-term, highly-charged civil rights movement. Today, you have won a victory in that struggle."
Rosie O'Donnell.
Governor Crist announced that the state would immediately cease enforcement of the ban, though it is possible that the Department of Children and Families will appeal the ruling to the Florida Supreme Court. Gill and the American Civil Liberties Union, which represented him and his partner, said that they welcome an appeal to obtain a final statewide determination on the law.
Rosie O'Donnell, who has been a fierce critic of the discriminatory law, which was enacted in 1977 in the wake of Anita Bryant's anti-gay crusade, issued a terse statement about the ruling: "After 33 years, it's about time."
Ruling on a challenge by Log Cabin Republicans to the Don't Ask, Don't Tell Act, passed by Congress in 1993,
which prohibits military service by openly gay men and lesbians, Federal District Judge Virginia Phillips has
declared DADT unconstitutional. In a decision released on September 9, 2010, the Riverside, California judge ruled
that the policy violates the due process clause of the Fifth Amendment and the guarantees of freedom of speech and
petition of the First Amendment to the Constitution of the United States. She has issued an injunction barring
enforcement of the policy. The Department of Justice has fourteen days to respond to the decision.
Alexander Nicholson, Director of Servicemembers United, who was himself discharged under DADT, described the decision as "an historic ruling for the gay military community."
(1929-2010)
Cultural critic Jill Johnston, whose influential collection of essays Lesbian Nation (1973) helped define lesbian feminism and helped spearhead the lesbian separatist movement of the 1970s, died in Hartford, Connecticut on September 18, 2010, following a stroke. Johnston, who wrote on politics and the arts for the The Village Voice, may have been best known for her provocative statement that "all women are lesbians except those that don't know it yet." She is survived by her spouse Ingrid Nyeboe and two children.
See:
Lesbian Nation
Separatism
(1952-2010)
Character actor Glenn Shadix died as the result of an accidental fall in his home in Birmingham, Alabama on September 7, 2010. Shadix was best known for his roles in several Tim Burton films, including Beetlejuice (1988) and the 2001 remake of Planet of the Apes. He also played Jerry's landlord in the NBC television series Seinfeld and did a great deal of voice-over work on television. On stage, he appeared in many productions, including one of Del Shores' Southern Baptist Sissies, which he considered autobiographical, since he grew up in the Southern Baptist Church and underwent aversion therapy in an effort to "cure" his homosexuality.
See:
Aversion Therapy
Film Actors: Gay Male
Southern Baptists
Stage Actors and Actresses
Shores, Del