Queer Women in the Hispanic Caribbean

This book considers the apparent invisibility of lesbianism throughout the literary history of the Hispanic Caribbean (Cuba, Puerto Rico, and the Dominican Republic), specifically during the twentieth and early twenty-first centuries (1970s-2010s). The book looks at the way in which certain circumstances simultaneously hide, regulate, and allow the expression of what are considered sexual “deviancies.” It observes the methods through which alternative female sexualities have been previously silenced or represented only at the symbolic level and explores the reasons why lesbian characters have only recently found public and open representation within the literature of the islands. Therefore, the book aims to present a history of female characters who love women, thus instituting a lesbian literary canon in the Hispanic Caribbean.