Despite All Adversities

Provides sophisticated theoretical approaches to Latin American cinema and sexual culture.
Despite All Adversities examines a representative selection of notable queer films by Spanish America’s most important directors since the 1950s. Each chapter focuses on a single film and offers rich and thoughtful new interpretations by a prominent scholar. The book explores films from across the region, including Tomás Gutiérrez Alea’s and Juan Carlos Tabío’s Fresa y chocolate (Strawberry and Chocolate, 1993), Marcelo Piñeyro’s Plata quemada (Burnt Money, 2000), Barbet Schroeder’s La Virgen de los Sicarios (Our Lady of the Assassins, 2000), Lucía Puenzo’s XXY (XXY, 2007), Francisco J. Lombardi’s No se lo digas a nadie (Don’t Tell Anyone, 1998), Arturo Ripstein’s El lugar sin límites (Hell Without Limits, 1978), among others. A survey of recent lesbian-themed Mexican films is also included.
Andrés Lema-Hincapié is Associate Professor of Ibero-American Literatures and Cultures at the University of Colorado Denver. He is the coeditor (with Conxita Domènech) of Pedro Calderón de la Barca’s La vida es sueño: Philosophical Crossroads, and the assistant editor of Burning Darkness: A Half Century of Spanish Cinema (edited by Joan Ramon Resina), also published by SUNY Press. Debra A. Castillo is Stephen H. Weiss Presidential Fellow, Emerson Hinchliff Professor of Hispanic Studies, and Professor of Comparative Literature at Cornell University. Her many books include Redreaming America: Toward a Bilingual American Culture, also published by SUNY Press.