Breaking the silence, dismantling taboos: Latino novels on AIDS
Sandoval Sánchez, A.
Journal of Homosexuality 34(3-4): 155-175
1998
ISSN/ISBN: 0091-8369 PMID: 9505230 DOI: 10.1300/j082v34n03_09Document Number: 263913
As AIDS has ravaged the world in the last two decades, literature has played an important role in giving testimony of the epidemic. According to different communities and particular experiences, AIDS literature can offer ways of coping and surviving. In the last few years the US Latino/a population has been highly affected by AIDS. The first genres to register AIDS were poetry and theatre. In this essay the author examines how AIDS is represented in the first four Latino novels to deal with the subject matter: Ana Castillo's So Far from God, Daniel Torres's Moriras si da una primavera, Elias Miguel Munoz's The Greatest Performance, and Jaime Manrique's Latin Moon in Manhattan. The author's critical reading centres on how AIDS constitutes a new articulation of identity, particularly gay and ethnic identity. He proposes that these novels contribute to the dismantling of homophobia and compulsory heterosexuality, deconstructing sexual and cultural taboos, and breaking the silence on AIDS/SIDA.