Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, The

Lewis, Linden (ed.). The Culture of Gender and Sexuality in the Caribbean, Gainesville, FL: University Press of Florida, 2003. 328 pp.

This collection of essays invokes two salient issues within the investigations of gender and sexuality: the struggles of resistance and the implicitly complicated geographies of the Caribbean. Linden Lewis, both the editor of the volume and a contributor, provides an introduction that offers useful and innovative definitions of the fluid contingencies that comprise the Caribbean. He explains the purpose of the volume is at once to counter the "hegemonic nature of heterosexuality and masculinity" in the region while also complicating questions of international relations, popular culture and literature, the constructions of masculinity, as well as feminist and lesbian practices in Caribbean studies (p. 4). The volume undertakes this ambitious agenda in an intentionally interdisciplinary manner. While Lewis and the other contributors avoid facile generalizations, the editor does assert two affiliated ideologies present within the Caribbean relating to issues of gender and sexuality: women relate to sexuality in a predominantly defensive mode while men are urged to "explore" within "heteronormative practices" (p. 5).

Lewis' frame attempts to move beyond conventional practices regarding Caribbean sexuality and gender studies. He deliberately includes a broad definition of gender, beyond woman-centered and even binary discourses while also arguing for greater attention to homosexual and lesbian perspectives. In this regard, Lewis' collection is a welcome addition to the field of Caribbean gender and sexuality studies that too frequently reinforce the patriarchal power structures they examine.

The collection advances through four broad movements: theoretical mediations, political terrain, socialization of masculinities, and historical considerations. Each of these areas provides readers with provocative materials to consider. In the first group of essays on theory, Hilbourne Watson's argument against the "liberal myth of gender blindness" is a useful corrective when considering intersections between nationalism and gender as male defined models. Lewis' own "Unpacking the Narrative" of masculinity serves as a model for critics and scholars to examine the complexities of many masculinities. Lewis powerfully argues for a multi-faceted and many-layered complexity of masculinity while acknowledging that it has too frequently been undifferentiated within cultural discourse.

The political tensions examined in the second set of essays incorporate discussions of Calypso as a Creole aesthetic in Trinidad, portraits of the Haitian female body as a site of resistance, and Lesbian Feminism in 1970s Puerto Rico. In its discussion of creolité and the female body, this aspect of the collection is the most conventional. Yet, the specifics within the essays, Patricia Mohammed on the gender codes in Calypso lyrics and Carolle Charles on Haitian Women's discourse of the body, do offer new information and a depth of understanding each case. Elizabeth Crespo-Kebler's work on "Constructions of Heterosexuality and Lesbian Subversions in Puerto Rico", however, is an entirely fresh contribution to the field. In this essay, she examines Puerto Rican case law as it defined rape, sodomy, and marriage and promoted heterosexuality as a "legal artifice that normalizefd] an oppressive structure" (p. 190).

The collection moves from the oppressive structures of the court to those of the streets. In Barry Chevannes' essay, "The Role of the Street in the Socialization of Caribbean Males," he reads the geography of Kingston, Jamaica and differences between the spaces of the yard, the school, and the street for children. He notes the predominance of girls in the yard and school and the predominance of boys in the yard and the street. The shared and relatively safe space of the enclosed yard encodes gender norms that become further structured in the power dynamics of the school and the street. Chevannes finds that the literal geographies that influence the coming of age of girls and boys reproduce ideas of appropriate spaces for both that ultimately leads to a greater aggregate of women at the university and men in prison.

The importance of the socialization of male children also comes into view in Rafael Ramirez's "Masculinity and Power in Puerto Rico." He rightly argues that the perpetuation of the "machismo" myth of Puerto Rican masculinity is both ethnocentric and class-biased. He argues for a more nuanced approach to masculinity and its dominant as well as subordinate structures. In Conrad James' "Queering Cuba" he reads the social structures of the Revolution and its impact on Manuel Granados while also contextualizing his argument with discussions of Renaldo Arenas and his claims of landscape and power. Conrad's reading of the Revolution builds an understanding both of Granados' short fiction written in Cuba and the power of Granados' own landscapes as well as their recreation during his Paris exile.