Overview
One writer is stranded by the Second World War. Another flees multiple revolutions to live the rest of his life in Rio de Janeiro. Two others, public about their sexuality at home, choose self-exile. In Lost and Found Voices Luc Beaudoin offers a critical engagement with these four displaced authors: Witold Gombrowicz, Valerii Pereleshin, Abdellah Taïa, and Slava Mogutin. Not quite fitting into their respective diasporas and sharing an urge to express their queer desires, it is in their published works of literature, film, and photography that these writers locate their shifting identities and emergent queer voices. Their artistry is the basis from which Beaudoin traces their expressions of desire in language, culture, and community, offering a contextual queer reading that navigates their linguistic, cultural, artistic, and sexual self-translations and self-portrayals. Their choices are determinative: Gombrowicz masked his attraction to men in his works, keeping the truth hidden in an intimate diary; Pereleshin explored his lust in Brazilian Portuguese after being shunned by the Russian diaspora; Taïa writes in French to destabilize both the language and his status as an immigrant in France; Mogutin becomes a hardcore gay rebel in word and image to rattle assumptions about gay life. Bringing authors generally not familiar to an English-speaking readership into one volume, and including Beaudoin's own experience of living between languages, Lost and Found Voices provides provocative insights into what it means to be gay in both the past and the present.
Full Product Details
Author: Luc Beaudoin
Publisher: McGill-Queen's University Press
Imprint: McGill-Queen's University Press
ISBN: 9780228013877
ISBN 10: 0228013879
Pages: 264
Publication Date: 15 November 2022
Audience:
General/trade
,
Professional and scholarly
,
General
,
Professional & Vocational
Format: Hardback
Publisher's Status: Active
Availability: In Print
This item will be ordered in for you from one of our suppliers. Upon receipt, we will promptly dispatch it out to you. For in store availability, please contact us.
Reviews
Cogent and convincing, Lost and Found Voices juxtaposes the lives and writings of four queer emigre authors, working in different times, places, and languages, to allow transnational commonalities to emerge. Weaving his own personal experiences into the analysis, Beaudoin's approach is bold and compelling. Brian James Baer, Kent State University and author of Queer Theory and Translation Studies: Language, Politics, Desire
Author Information
Luc Beaudoin is professor in gender and women’s studies at the University of Denver.
