Queer Genealogies in Dominican Literature and Culture

Maja Horn

• Publisher: University of Florida Press
• Year: 2025
• Print ISBN: 9781683405542, 9781683405498
• eBook ISBN: 9781683405641
• Edition: 1
• Topic: Literature
• Subtopic: Latin American & Caribbean Literary Criticism
• Index: Literature

Tracing cultural representations of queerness in the Dominican Republic from the 1950s to the present

In this book, Maja Horn examines the evolution of queer Dominican literary and cultural production from the 1950s to the present, challenging simplistic developmental narratives of LGBTIQ+ progress. Through an analysis of literature, theater, and activism, Horn traces how same-sex desire and gender nonconformity have been negotiated both tacitly and overtly across the years.

Beginning with early forerunners, Horn looks at literary representations in works by Hilma Contreras and Pedro René Contín Aybar during the 1930–1961 dictatorship of Rafael Trujillo. Horn goes on to explore the emergence of queer nightlife spaces during the Balaguer years through novels by Rita Indiana Hernández and Rey Emmanuel Andújar. Horn discusses how the work of playwright Waddys Jáquez challenges reductive mainstream representations of trans subjects and HIV/AIDS in the new democratic era. The book concludes with a discussion of groundbreaking recent texts that have expanded portrayals beyond Santo Domingo and introduced new perspectives.

Throughout Queer Genealogies in Dominican Literature and Culture, Horn shows how class, race, and gender have shaped access to public space and strategies for negotiating sexuality. Horn also reveals the coexistence of different ways of expressing queer identities. Recognizing the influence of coloniality and narratives of identity in the global North, Horn celebrates the shifting geographies and multiplicities of a uniquely creole Dominican queerness.

Table of contents

• Cover
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Dedication
• Contents
• Acknowledgments
• Introduction Queer Dominican Genealogies | Between the Tacit and Streetwalking
• One Dictatorship and Same-Sex Desire | Engendering the Tacit in the Writing of Pedro René Contín Aybar (1907–1981) and Hilma Contreras (1913–2006)
• Two Queer Nightlife during the Balaguer Years in the Novels of Rita I. Hernández (1977–) and Rey E. Andújar (1977–)
• Three Waddys Jáquez’s Theater, Travestis, and HIV/AIDS in the New Democratic Era
• four Divagaciones 2006 | New Directions in Dominican LGBTIQ+ Politics and Literature
• Conclusion Queer Dominican Genealogies
• Notes
• Bibliography
• Index