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Sonia Rivera-Valdés.
NY: Seven Stories Press, 2001.
ISBN-10 1-58322-047-X
ISBN-13 978-1-58322-047-4

Michael Sedano

One reason I avoid back cover blurbs is I like to let a text speak for itself. Moreover, I’m often disappointed when high expectations meet a lesser actuality. Yet, I received a gift from an unexpected source, and, on opening the package, find myself turning a book around in my hands, ritually reading the book jacket while signaling my surprise and pleasure at what sounds like a scintillatingly lurid piece of fiction.

The gift is Forbidden Stories of Marta Veneranda, a 2001 collection of ten translated stories written by U.S. Cubana Sonia Rivera-Valdes. A gift to me from an enthusiastic reader, I have mixed emotions in approaching the book because of the back cover blurbs comparing this collection to Anais Nin. “Makes you forget the world around you . . . in human behavior-that which is not sanctioned by society," I’m promised. Nin is pretty hot, I think, but then comes the toughest promises yet. "Slyly heretical . . . most important book of stories since Joyce's Dubliners". By now my head is spinning. Can this book possibly meet such rising expectations? I thank the giver and promise her I'll put it at the top of my "to be read" stack.

Good things come to those who read, and now that I’ve read the nine stories, ten if you count the "Explanatory Note" as a fiction--which I do--I understand the blurbers’ hyperbolic enthusiasm. The stories, it turns out, are feminist, gay erotic literature. How was I to know? The characterizations “gay” “erotic”, absent from the back cover blurbs though perhaps obviously implied in "Forbidden" and the goddess Venus referent, strike me in the opening paragraph where Rivera claims her stories mask identities of true confessors of hidden shameful secrets. The shame, Rivera explains, comes not from criminality or social sanction, but "the way he or she has perceived and experienced it". So it sounds like hot stuff.

The buildup promises more than Rivera's translators can deliver. Or it might be that Rivera never put in the heat, and this is a fully complete translation.

Many of these stories mix hetero and homo sexuality with gay abandon. A woman first discovers she thrills at hairless skin when she kisses a body with passion. An older woman rejects a younger out of age, but relents in the end, leaves New York to Havana and the bedroom of her young friend and the friend knows all the words. A woman meets a Kama Sutra expert who entertains her for a weekend. The woman regrets he will not abandon his gay partner for her, but she expresses gratitude to know hers is the biggest yoni the Kama Sutra expert has seen. And stuff like this. Passionate. Funny. Weird. Sad.

The stories flow with economy and directness. Years and momentous events go by in the spaces between paragraphs. One sentence the character's a struggling factory worker screwing the boss to protect a co-worker's job, the next page she's a college graduate. Sensations, of course, control erotic literature. Here, sharing the thoughts and feelings of her characters, Rivera excels. The story of the enormously fat woman with the yeast infection and kidney problems that give a room-permeating stink provides a vivid reading moment. I wonder how the Spanish expresses the man's arousal as the fat woman slyly seduces him by spreading her huge thighs to fill his eyes and nose with her essence. A few stories later, Rivera refers to the same woman in so mundane a sentence that a reader is advised not to read the book in public, to avoid having to explain the surprised laughter. Or perhaps one should.

Rivera’s heterosexual stories aren’t entirely straight. Here the author blends sexuality with violence against women. I appreciate Rivera's restraint in avoiding the stronger treatment elected by other writers, America's Dream for one, although the dull relentlessness of one woman's story numbed me for a while after finishing the story. Yet, that afternoon I remember asking myself, "Self, why is that woman so stupid?" I don't think that's unkind, but perhaps the only response I'm capable of.

Rivera's translators have made her impressive. She's won awards so she may be. Her tales provide diversion best taken a few pages at a time. For example, I read Marta Veneranda over a month’s time, at lunch each day, a few pages at a time and much as I look forward to getting back to other activities, I regretted having to, as this meant closing the cover until another day. But I thought also, "Big deal. Exposés -- especially sex exposés-- should be more graphic, more exciting." I think of the sex in Villanueva's Naked Ladies for example, and regret Rivera's understatement. I had hoped for lurid prose and got elegant writing instead. Still, when I see "forbidden" I want forbidden.

Seven Stories Press makes it easy to sample the work, as you've noticed if you clicked on the links in the above, or the link in the title of this column. You'll find a Google Books-like fascimile of the work by visiting the publisher's website, or clicking on the links noted.

I hope others will find this collection and share their response, as I'd be interested for a broader point of view. I’m guessing a woman will approach the stories with a different purpose and a different opinion from a sixty-something man.

A ver.


Gente, there goes the final Tuesday in July 2008! Tempus fugit, carpe libros. In comes August, a wedding anniversary and birthday month.

mvs

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Michael Sedano

It was eighty four degrees in Los Angeles yesterday, Monday, a week and two days away from St. Valentine's day. Our national annual celebration of eros. How fitting, then, that last week a kind of erotic resentment came up in a La Bloga discussion. Anonymous2 took exception to a description arising from a remark about the confluence of John Rechy's The Coming of the Night and a story in Dagoberto Gilb's Woodcuts of Women.

Regretting Anonymous2's unintended affront, I decided to take another look at the issue, thinking one man's eros is another man's ...what? Disinterest? Distance? Dismay? Something with a name, but not homophobia, as Anonymous2 accused. Something to discuss, yes.

Gilb's story, "Bottoms", coincidentally happens on a hot day like Monday in El Lay. The heat of the day overlaps the character's reading-induced heat, and heat emanating from a bikini-clad man in the pool. Without identifying the novel, the character is writing a review of The Coming of the Night.

"The book is as explicit as I have ever known, one page after another. I have never read so much about cocks and pecs, the hard and soft, big and small. And it had never occurred to me to consider people as bottoms or tops--that is, ones who want it put and the ones who want to put it. I can't say I'm shocked by the novel's details, nor am I particularly bothered by their modus operandi, but I am on alert. A little touchy, if you'll excuse the expression. For example, a man with a stylish bald head, thick gray hairs on his chest, nipple rings, who I find next to me on the grass, who I bet is top or bottom oriented, who I probably would have never noticed before, for whatever reason has made me uncomfortable, in a synchronicity sort of way--he has put that towel too close to mine and has smiled at me."

It's clear Gilb's alluding to the opening pages of Rechy's novel. The opening story "Jesse, Morning" talks in third person about Jesse's planned celebration of "one glorious year of being gay". Jesse is thinking about his body, about all the sex he's going to have cruising from place to place, reminiscing about a recent night with two men Jesse played sex games with, alternating sex with the one then the other. "In his bedroom in his neat apartment in a court of units surrounding a pool in West Hollywood, Jesse became hard thinking about the prospect. He sat on the edge of his bed wearing only white briefs, now being punched by his aroused cock."

The first time I picked up The Coming of the Night, that paragraph led me to set down the book and not pick it up again for a few days. It has similar impact on Gilb's character, sitting poolside, synchronicity starting at that poolside apartment. A page later, Jesse looks out at the swimming pool and Gilb's story merges: "A man was lounging there. From here all Jesse could see were his long bare legs. The man stood up, to oil himself. From the back, he looked fine--broad shoulders, tapered waist, dark hair. Masculine, so far. Sometimes you couldn't tell until they started talking and ugh, what a surprise. Safe to assume, too, with that bikini he was wearing, that the man was gay."

Gilb's character makes that assumption about his poolside male companion. As an antidote, the character flees into the arms of the woman on his other side. In all likelihood, Gilb's character would have made a different pass at the woman and their affair turn out no differently than it develops. The friendly man simply filled geography and provided the hook-up strategy of the moment. Is Gilb's character homophobic? He confesses otherwise: "I want to be a stereotype: Man sees woman. Thinks woman. Thinks tops. Has woman. Satisfies self." The preference for one is not defined as the absence of the other, it simply is a preference.

I've been ruminating over the issue since that colloquy, and raised the issue with Kathy Gallegos, who runs Highland Park's Avenue50 Studio. Kathy's about to host a wonderful show featuring erotica by women called "Beautiful Deceptions".

Kathy showed me a beautiful photograph of a crouching woman. To Kathy, it has erotic power. I saw a well-printed photo, the first thing I noticed is the model's body outlines an abstract valentine heart. On closer look--her nipples--it's clear it's a crouching woman.

Because the photo displays the woman's nipples, Kathy decided she could not mail that image on the gallery's publicity, electing the image at right. Photographically, not as well-printed as the crouching woman, I'm glad Avenue50Studio uses this image. I find it erotic and a little deceptive, perfectly fitted to the show that runs February 10 through March 4, 2007. Is it a woman's body? Are those female breasts, or a soft man's chest? To echo Rechy, (and doesn't Kathy's photo echo the cover image on Rechy's novel?) I see the photo and I think, feminine so far, but I won't be able to tell until (s)he sits up.

We chatted for a while on why the crouching woman is not as erotic, to me. Perhaps the image is too complex. It doesn't take much to arouse a man's eros, I claimed. Aside from that, there's a lot of androgyny in the crouching woman's face, reminding me of what David Bowie looked like in the 1970s, and I'm not sure some men would be comfortable with the danger the woman's pose suggests. I love the photo though, and agree it should be printed much larger than 8" x 10", maybe in platinum.

Gente in LA will have the opportunity to see these powerful images for themselves when the Poli Marichal curated show opens. There's to be a discussion and a dance performance, too. Ave50 is a cultural hotbed that, sadly, the Los Angeles Times routinely ignores. The penalty of being on the Eastside. I hope you'll click on the link and tell your friends about the show, and the gallery.

Not sure where this discussion's been, or where it's headed. I suppose that's up to you. Next week, look for my, and the other La Bloga Blogueras' Blogueros' Valentine wishes for you. For now, I'm sure it's safe to say, Make Love, Not War.

mvs

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