Title: Red-inked retablos /
Authors: González, Rigoberto.
Publisher: University of Arizona Press,
Year: 2013
Subjects: American essays Mexican American authors; Mexican American gays.
Abstract: In the Mexican Catholic tradition, retablos are ornamental structures made of carved wood framing an oil painting of a devotional image, usually a patron saint. Acclaimed author and essayist Rigoberto González commemorates the passion and the pain of these carvings in his new volume Red-Inked Retablos, a moving memoir of human experience and thought. González continues to expand his oeuvre on mariposa (literally, "butterfly") memory, a genre he pioneered in which Chicano/a writers openly address non-traditional sexuality. For González, mariposa memory is important testimony not only about reconfiguring personal identity in relation to masculinity, culture, and religion. It's also about highlighting values like education, shaping a sex-positive discourse, and exercising agency through a public voice. It's about making the queer experience a Chicano experience and the Chicano experience a queer one.--From publisher description.
Contents: About retablos, about mariposa memory -- The Truman Capote aria -- Confessions of a gay Catholic boy -- Orphans in the terrorist world -- Easter Rock : 1983 -- Memory lessons, memory lesions -- Andrés Montoya : the ice worker still sings -- The poet Ai : an appreciation -- Beloved jotoranos -- Lullaby from Thomas James -- Roxana's melody -- To the writer, to the activist, to the citizen -- The Gay Brown Beret Suite -- Toward a mariposa consciousness.