ReadOut Shorts

Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression

Edited by Lourdes Torres and Inmaculada Perpetusa-Seva

Temple University Press

An academic survey of lesbian imagery in Hispanic literature and culture, Tortilleras is the first-ever such anthology to venture into Queer Atzatlan. Sixteen contributors, including the editors, examine the intersection of gender, race, and sexuality over the last 400 years. Tortilleras introduces readers to such fascinating women as Argentine film director María Luisa Marta Carlota Bemberg and the 16th century “lesbian celebrities” Catalina de Erauso and Elena/o de Céspedes. Erauso and Céspedes both openly lived as men and may well be considered early female-to-male transsexuals (Erauso surgically removed her breasts and Céspedes “acquired” a penis). A few very short sections appear in the original Spanish, some of which is centuries old, but most readers with a moderate mastery of the language can muddle through it.

Much too scholarly to attract the casual reader (there are pages and pages of footnotes), it should be considered required reading for women’s and Hispanic studies programs.

The title is an inside joke. If you’re not familiar with the Hispanic culture, get a Latina lesbian to explain it to you. Here’s a hint: It has nothing to do with food. —Olivia Flores Alavarez

Irrefutable Evidence

CN Winters

Quest Books

An unexpectedly well-done first novel, Irrefutable Evidence is engaging and colorfully drawn, with well-crafted characters and unexpected plot twists.

After accidentally witnessing a murder on the streets of Detroit, Sara Langforth becomes the killer’s next target. Police Lt. Denise VanCook is assigned to protect Sara, but that proves to be very difficult when she has to juggle bounty hunters, crooked cops, and a growing attraction for the star witness. Together the women keep one step ahead of a determined hit man but can’t outrun their feelings for each other.

Winters throws a few surprises at her readers. In a brave and oh-so-politically-incorrect move, Lt. VanCook is comfortably bisexual. Lesbian novels demand rigid, adamant lesbians as their heroines, don’t they? Thankfully, Winters doesn’t think so. She breaks away from the genre’s standard formula and creates a wonderfully three-dimensional, complex, and realistic character in VanCook.

Winters breaks the mold in another way—she is happily married to a man, unheard of for the writer of lesbian novels. But whether based on personal experience or the result of pure imagination, the romance and sexual tension in Irrefutable Evidence is palatable.

The novel’s only flaw is Sara’s occasional lapse into stupidity. (“La, la, la, I’m being hunted down by a maniac—I think I’ll duck my armed escort and trot down to the corner for a bagel, la, la, la.”) But the reader, like Lt. VanCook, forgives Sara her blunders.

While this is her first published novel, Winters has been winning fans for several years now as a writer of Xena, Warrior Princess fan fiction (unauthorized tales based on the television character). A second novel, One Belief Away, has already been published by Baycrest Books, and two more, Pennsylvania Ave. and Contractor for Hire, are in the works. —OFA

Crawfish Dreams

Nancy Rawles

Doubleday

Hailed as an African-American Like Water for Chocolate, Crawfish Dreams is instead a miserable failure. Although Nancy Rawles is a writer of considerable talent, Dreams is populated by characters that are unlovable, unhappy, and ultimately uninteresting.

Dreams follows Camille Broussard, the matriarch of a selfish brood of useless, lazy adult children who spend as much time lying to themselves as they do to each other. A Creole transplanted to the decaying Los Angeles Watts neighborhood, Camille is determined to “cook her way to heaven,” and she serves up endless helpings of gumbo, red beans, and pralines. Sure that she can’t rely on any of her children for financial help, Camille tries to launch her own cooking business, but her efforts are continually sabotaged by her good-for-nothing kids. When she sends one blockhead son to deliver an order of pies, he samples the treats along the way, and the pies arrive picked at and pawed over. Her family can’t bother with the most minimal of niceties. After being released from prison, Camille’s grandson doesn’t even say “thanks for the ride home” before running off to rejoin his hoodlum friends. Dragged along to visit an elderly friend, Camille’s lesbian daughter ends up smooching with the friend’s day nurse on the back porch. It’s not that she likes the woman. She is just too lazy to fend off the nurse’s clumsy mauling.

What little regard Camille does win from the reader is lost when she refuses to hold any of her children accountable for their deplorable behavior. The whole family seems determined to careen from one disaster to another. Too stubborn or too stupid to change, everyone is just as irresponsible and unhappy on the last page as they were on the first.

Like Like Water for Chocolate, Dreams weaves recipes throughout the book. Supposedly significant titles like “Watts Riots Capon in Red Wine Sauce” are used in an attempt to tie the book to the real world, but the ploy fails. Littered with colorful phrases (“Look both ways before you cross the devil”), Crawfish Dreams, like Camille, is the willing victim of the Broussard children. Despite Rawles’ lyrical writing, the story fails to engage the reader, since none of the characters, not even Camille, is worth caring about.

Crawfish Dreams aside, Rawles is a gifted writer, and her next effort might be a better showcase for her talents—if only she can leave those backward Broussards out of it. —OFA

The White House Workout

Andrew Flach and Rosemarie Alfrieri

Healthy Living Books

“The Bench Press is one of President Bush’s favorite weight training exercises. It has been reported that he can bench press 185 pounds.”

Now that factoid is not the kind of thing you will hear on NewsNight With Aaron Brown.

Amazingly irony-free, this trim volume carries the hefty subtitle The Fitness Plan Inspired by President George W. Bush’s HealthierUS Initiative. We’ve never heard of this important-sounding initiative either.

Even Republicans may wince at some of the breathless, worshiping prose. (Sample analysis of Bush: “What a fabulous fitness role-model for all Americans!”) The cover sports a leggy shot of the Shrub in shorts, but there are surprisingly few pictures of G.W. inside. In fact, as disclosed by small print on the publisher’s page, White House Workout is not even sanctioned by the White House.

Focused on fitness and not politics, the authors lean toward sensible and the nonpartisan. Basically, their message is eat less, exercise more. Oddly for a book devoted to health, the 44 pages of recipes include no nutritional information. Blessedly, the dishes lack administration-inspired names (Condeleeza’s Rice-Cream Bombe, Donald Rumsfeld’s Shock & Slaw). —Tim Brookover

If you have any comments about this article, please email them to letters@outsmartmagazine.com.