Starting at the beginning of the twentieth century, Albuquerque examines the way the Modernist movement both fueled and inhibited the use of gay imagery in Brazilian drama. This elegant and fluid study ultimately becomes an examination of a whole Latin society, and the ways in which Latin theatre has absorbed and reflected the culture's own changing sensibilities, that will intrigue anyone interested in Latin American culture, literature, or theater.

Winner, 2008 Elizabeth A. Steinberg Prize

Severino J. Albuquerque is a professor of Portuguese and director of Latin American, Caribbean, and Iberian Studies at the University of Wisconsin–Madison.  He is also coeditor of Luso-Brazilian Review and recipient of the 2002 Univeristy of Wisconsin–Madison Chancellor’s Distinguished Teaching Award.

“This valuable narrative of identity and agency explains how a marginalized group can cross boundaries to achieve a degree of self-awareness and challenge the public to engage in personal reflection and cultural criticism. The cathartic AIDS metaphor concretizes the experiences of suffering and exclusion while calling for a more humane response to otherness. Highly recommended.”—D. L. Heyck, Choice

"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, author of Beyond Carnival