Besame Mucho: New Gay Latino Fiction

by Jaime Manrique (Editor), Jesse Dorris (Editor)

These stories and excerpts from novels cover a wide range of the lives of Chicanos in California and the Southwest, magic realism in the Colombian countryside, santeria, the world of hustlers and Houses in New York, transvestites in Rio de Janeiro, the homophobic role of the Catholic church in gay Latino culture, and, of course, love.

Genres: LGBT

248 pages, Paperback

First published June 1, 1999

About the author

Jaime Manrique (16 June 1949 - ) Colombian American author, poet, and journalist.

Reviews

[Richard Jespers · Rating 4 out of 5]

On my shelf for a long time, I finally took this collection down and enjoyed most of the stories very much. Among the best, I believe, are Manrique’s “Señoritas in Love,” “What’s Up, Father Infante?”, a gripping story by Miguel Falquez-Certain, and “Ruby Díaz” by Al Luján. The entire collection blends together a beautiful chorus of gay Latino voices, from South America to New York to California. So much that the non-Latino community has to learn what gay Latino men face with regard to their families, their communities, and their relationship to the Roman Catholic Church. They withstand immense pressures to conform to cultural norms, even more so than the Anglo population, I would dare say. Kudos to these men for sharing their stories by way of lively and enlightening fiction. It never dates.

[Pio Perez · Rating 5 out of 5]

Wonderful Anthology! I recommend it to anyone!!

[Liam Ostermann · Rating 4 out of 5]

"Jaime Manrique, called by the Washington Post Book World 'the most accomplished gay Latino writer of his generation', has gathered in this anthology, for the first time, a group of living Latino writers, most of whom were born in the United States. But this volume also includes writers from the Americas and Spain, almost all of them new voices, a few of them making their debut in print. These stories and excerpts from novels cover a wide range of themes: the lives of Chicanos in California and the Southwest, magic realism in the Colombian countryside, Santeria, the world of hustlers and Houses in New York, transvestites in Rio de Janeiro, the homophobic role of the Catholic Church in gay Latino culture, and, of course, love.

"What emerges from this collection is a vibrant and kaleidoscopic mosaic of the Latino experience, focusing on and illuminating what it means to be a gay Latino at the beginning of the new millennium." From the back cover of the 1999 paperback edition from Painted Leaf Press.

What a long time ago 1999 seems when you read the above 'the most accomplished gay Latino writer of his generation' would anyone write that now without sensing that the descriptive qualifiers before writer are more of an insult then a compliment? But then what happened to hustlers, NY Houses, Santeria, transvestites? For that matter what happened to Painted Leaf Press? The world has changed so much it is hard not to see this anthology as something of a time capsule.

That doesn't mean there are not fine pieces in this anthology, how could it not with authors like Guillermo Reyes, Rigoberto Gonzalez and Emanuel Xavier? But I can't help thinking that the definition of gay Latino fiction would now need to be more rigorously defined then Manrique's 'I've defined Latino as any fiction writer of Latin descent who has lived a significant portion of his life in the United States' and because of that 'forerunners like Lorca, Cernuda, Manuel Puig, Reinaldo Arenas...are not here'. That of course Latino literature is separate from Latino-American literature (don't dare say Hispanic because where does that leave Brazil?).

I don't want anyone to think I am dissatisfied with this anthology, it is marvellous and well worth reading still for the richness of the pieces from a wonderful selection of authors many of whom have had, or are still having, distinguished literary careers. Maybe it is just the time when terms like 'gay' or 'Latino' could be used without thoughtful definition has passed.