Trans Bodies, Popular Culture, and (National) Identity in Crisis

Abstract

This chapter analyzes two texts: Luis Zapata’s novel La hermana secreta de Angélica María (1989; The Secret Sister of Angélica María) from Mexico and Mayra Santos-Febres’s novel Sirena Selena vestida de pena (2000; Sirena Selena) from Puerto Rico. These texts have three obsessions in common: the notion of the travesti and transsexual as seductive and dangerous, their intimate connection to popular culture through (musical) performance, and their problematic relationship with the idea of nation and identity. The highly celebrated novel by Santos-Febres has garnered much debate about the limits of national identity. Zapata’s text has elicited a more meager critical response but can be seen as a precursor to Santos-Febres’s work in its use of the notion of gender as performance through its tripartite deployment of the intersex, travesti, and transsexual subject in its main protagonist.