Brazilian Gay Culture
Gay Issues In Brazil

Beneath The Equator: Cultures Of
Desire, Male Homosexuality, And
Emerging Gay Communities In Brazil
by Richard G. Parker

Richard Parker's Beneath the Equator is a groundbreaking anthropological study of male-male relationships in Brazil and the ensuing emergence of distinct gay communities in that country. Parker raises important questions that challenge Western ideas about same-gender desire and sexuality. In the first chapters of the book--using his own research as well as a wealth of other materials--Parker elucidates how gender, race, the history of colonialism, and the views of Western countries have all contributed to constructing specific Brazilian homosexualities. In subsequent chapters, he charts how these manifestations of same-sex desire form the basis for a series of distinct communities. Parker also discusses in depth the effect of the AIDS epidemic on Brazilian gay life and how different, culturally specific AIDS prevention strategies have been formulated and employed to deal with the disease. Written in clear and accessible language, Beneath the Equator brings together a huge amount of research and thought and presents the reader not only with a new, complex portrait of gay life in Brazil but new ways of conceptualizing sexuality and culture worldwide. --Michael Bronski

The Brazilian Sound

Alair Gomes
photos by Alair de Oliveira Gomes

This book is the first to feature the work of the Brazilian photographer Alair de Oliveira Gomes (1921-1992). A philosopher, art critic, and university professor, he was in his fifties when he began to develop a body of photographic work that focused almost exclusively on athletic young men on the beach at Rio de Janeiro. This tireless collector of books, pictures, and films transformed the thousands of pages of his diaries into an immense erotic tableau of black-and-white photographs devoted to the beauty of the male physique. Photographs covertly taken on the beach, or with a telephoto zoom lens from the window of his apartment, were extensively reworked and ordered in carefully constructed sequences. This group of photographs, now preserved at the National Library of Rio, constitutes one of the most original photographic works of the last thirty years. 150 illustrations. --book description

Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality In
Twentieth Century Brazil (hardcover)

Beyond Carnival: Male Homosexuality In
Twentieth Century Brazil (paperback)
by James Naylor Green

For many foreign observers, Brazil still conjures up a collage of exotic images, ranging from the camp antics of Carmen Miranda to the bronzed girl (or boy) from Ipanema moving sensually over the white sands of Rio's beaches. Among these tropical fantasies is that of the uninhibited and licentious Brazilian homosexual, who expresses uncontrolled sexuality during wild Carnival festivities and is welcomed by a society that accepts fluid sexual identity. However, in Beyond Carnival, the first sweeping cultural history of male homosexuality in Brazil, James Green shatters these exotic myths and replaces them with a complex picture of the social obstacles that confront Brazilian homosexuals. Ranging from the late nineteenth century to the rise of a politicized gay and lesbian rights movement in the 1970s, Green's study focuses on male homosexual subcultures in Rio de Janeiro and Sao Paulo. He uncovers the stories of men coping with arrests and street violence, dealing with family restrictions, and resisting both a hostile medical profession and moralizing influences of the Church. Green also describes how these men have created vibrant subcultures with alternative support networks for maintaining romantic and sexual relationships and for surviving in an intolerant social environment. He then goes on to trace how urban parks, plazas, cinemas, and beaches are appropriated for same-sex erotic encounters, bringing us into the world of street cruising, male hustlers, and cross-dressing prostitutes. --book description
 

Gender And Society In
Contemporary Brazilian Cinema
by David William Foster

"Gender is an absolute ground zero for most human societies," writes David William Foster, "an absolute horizon of social subjectivity." In this book, he examines gender issues in thirteen Brazilian films made (with one exception) after the 1985 return to constitutional democracy and elimination of censorship to show how these issues arise from and comment on the sociohistorical reality of contemporary Brazilian society. Foster organizes his study around three broad themes: construction of masculinity, constructions of feminine and feminist identities, and same-sex positionings and social power. Within his discussions of individual films ranging from Jorge um brasileiro to A hora da estrela to Beijo no asfalto, he offers new ways of understanding national ideals and stereotypes, sexual dissidence (homoeroticism and transgenderism), heroic models, U.S./Brazilian relations, revolutionary struggle, and human rights violations. As the first study of Brazilian cinematic representations of gender ideology in English or Portuguese, this book will be important reading in film and cultural studies. --book description

Tentative Transgressions: Homosexuality,
 AIDS, and the Theater in Brazil
by Severino J. Albuquerque

"Albuquerque’s work . . . provides an archaeology of theatrical representations of homosexuality in Brazil, an alternative history of Brazilian theater from the margins, a critical analysis of canonical and non-canonical plays infused with the insights of feminist and queer theory, as well as a history of the representation of AIDS in Brazilian culture."—Fernando Arenas, University of Minnesota

"Albuquerque has produced a first-rate analysis of the presentations (and absences) of images of homosexualities in twentieth-century Brazilian theater."—James Green
 

Travesti: Sex, Gender And Culture
Among Brazilian Transgendered Prostitutes
by Don Kulick

It is wonderful and weirdly fitting that one of the jacket blurbs for this work of social anthropology is by sex educator and former porn star Annie Sprinkle. Just as there is nothing dry or remote about Annie Sprinkle's delivery, there is nothing dry or remote about Don Kulick's. In fact, this may be the most readable and engaging study of transgenderism to surface in years. For seven months in 1994, Kulick lived in a household of "travestis"--Brazilian male prostitutes who live as women. He constantly tape-recorded their casual conversations, whether on the street soliciting customers or in their small rooms in the ghettos of Salvador, and has been able to trace the motivations behind their behavior and body modifications with plausibility and compassion. So absorbing are the details of the travestis' lives, as recounted by Kulick, that the reader can easily miss the author's equally acute analysis of their often bizarre transformations and of what travestis, with their exaggerated performance of "femininity," suggest about the construction of gender in Brazil. --Regina Marler
 

Sexuality, Politics and AIDS in Brazil
by Richard Parker
 

Sex, Drugs, And HIV/AIDS In Brazil
by Paulo Telles, James Inciardi, Hilary Surratt

In Sex, Drugs, and HIV/AIDS in Brazil, the authors examine the complexity of the sex/drugs/AIDS linkages, analyze how Brazil's sexual culture impacts the spread of HIV, and discuss how the problems of inequality, disease, economics, and politics impact AIDS prevention programming. The book publicizes the results of a field study (PROVIVA), which was funded by the US National Institute on Drug Abuse, that analyzes an AIDS prevention/intervention program as it is applied to people in Rio de Janeiro at high risk for AIDS: drug users, prostitutes, and street children. The research involved combines anthropological, sociological, and biological perspectives, and all data is gathered through empirical and ethnographic techniques. --book description

Also See:

Books: Brazilian Culture

Love, Sex, Sexuality In Brazil

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