Queer ducks, Puerto Rican patos, and Jewish- American feygelekh: birds and the cultural representation of homosexuality
Titel:
Queer ducks, Puerto Rican patos, and Jewish- American feygelekh: birds and the cultural representation of homosexuality
Auteur:
La Fountain Stokes, Lawrence
Verschenen in:
Centro journal
Paginering:
Jaargang XIX (2007) nr. 1 pagina's 192-229
Jaar:
2007
Inhoud:
This article explores popular linguistic and artistic usages of birds as metaphors for male and female homosexuality and for divergent gender expression in the Americas and Europe, focusing on Puerto Rico and the United States. First, I analyze the lexical coincidence of the phrase queer duck with terms in Spanish and Yiddish such as pato, pata, and feygele. I then go on to discuss Puerto Rican and diasporic cultural productions engaging these tropes, including works by Alfredo Collado Martell, Luis Lloréns Torres, Alfredo Villanueva-Collado, Ángel Lozada, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Alexandra Pagán Vélez, and the Arthur Avilés Typical Theatre, as well as my own performance piece, Abolición del pato. I conclude by analyzing the Jewish- American Internet flash animation and motion picture Queer Duck and Harvey Fierstein¿s children´s book and the HBO animated film The Sissy Duckling. This comparative linguistic and cultural analysis helps to understand strategies of negotiation of divergent sexual and gender expression in diverse social contexts, and demonstrates the creative reappropriation and resemantization of stigmatized terms.
Uitgever:
City University of New York : Centro de Estudios Puertorriqueños (provided by DOAJ)
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