Sobre la "peleita monga" en la literatura puertorriquena: masculinidades inadecuadas en los cuentos de Manuel Abreu Adorno y Rafael Franco Steeves

Through an analysis of Manuel Abreu Adorno's Llegaron los hippies (1978) and Rafael Franco Steeves's Alaska (2007)--two authors that have been mostly overlooked by critics of Puerto Rican literature--the essay argues that there is a literary tradition interested on a representation of vuln...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:Centro journal 2020-03, Vol.32 (1), p.64
Main Author: Sierra-Rivera, Judith
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Franco, Rafael
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Summary:Through an analysis of Manuel Abreu Adorno's Llegaron los hippies (1978) and Rafael Franco Steeves's Alaska (2007)--two authors that have been mostly overlooked by critics of Puerto Rican literature--the essay argues that there is a literary tradition interested on a representation of vulnerable heterosexual male bodies that embrace a performance of a mongo masculinity, that is, male bodies that use failure as a survival tactic. Therefore, these bodies exhibit the emptiness at the center of a letrado and popular discourse anxious about a colonial shame that has been associated with racialized and sexualized subjectivities, including what has been defined as a docile masculinity. Instead, the mongos choose life over the patriarchal imperative to dominate others. This literary analysis contributes to the discussion of masculinity studies in Puerto Rico by establishing a dialogue with previous scholarship on gender and sexuality phenomena in the island. [Keywords: masculinity, male body, heterosexuality, vulnerability, Puerto Rican literature, Manuel Abreu Adorno, Rafael Franco Steeves]
ISSN:1538-6279