An attractive young Latin American man graces the cover of this excellent collection of essays that examines same-sex desire in Latin America and beyond during the twentieth century. He sits crouched on a tiled floor in shorts. His head rests tightly in his crossed arms as he stares into the camera. Bare walls and a partially opened window with slatted wooden shutters suggest that the photograph was taken in a decaying house or apartment in a tropical locale. The young man’s gaze evokes sadness, seduction, mystery, and perhaps ambiguity. José Quiroga artfully plays with these and other manifestations of erotic desire that are embedded in the multiple identities and layered performances of men who engage in sexual relations with other men in Latin America and the diaspora.

Quiroga uses the mask as a metaphor for the complex process of negotiating sexuality in often-times hostile societies. He analyzes a cluster of...

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