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Sex and Sexuality in Latin America.
Edited by DANIEL BALDERSTON and DONNA J. GUY. New York: New York University Press, 1997. Notes. Bibliography. Index. viii, 288 pp. Cloth, $55.00. Paper, $19.95.
Daniel Balderston and Donna Guy have undertaken a daunting and important task in editing an interdisciplinary collection of essays that employ sexuality as an analytical category in studies that roam throughout Latin America, from the late colonial and early national periods up to the present. The essays touch on everything from tango lyrics and soccer chants in Argentina, to the criminology of "sexual deviance" in Mexico, to Puerto Rican literature in the United States. The resulting volume at once underscores the possibilities and the difficulties of such a vast project.
One of the obvious obstacles to truly interdisciplinary work is the difficulty of integrating disparate and even antagonistic methodologies and theoretical frameworks. Unfortunately, Balderston and Guy's five-page introduction leaves this important task to the reader. The book also lacks a concluding chapter to tie...