Queer Rebels is a study of gay narrative writings published in Spain at
the turn of the 20th century. The book scrutinises the ways in which
the literary production of contemporary Spanish gay authors – José
Luis de Juan, Luis G. Martín, Juan Gil-Albert, Juan Goytisolo, Eduardo
Mendicutti, Luis Antonio de Villena and Álvaro Pombo – engages with
homophobic and homophile discourses, as well as with the vernacular
and international literary legacy.
The frst part revolves around the metaphor of a rebellious scribe who
queers literary tradition by clandestinely weaving changes into copies of
the books he makes. This subversive writing act, named ‘Mazuf’s gesture’
after the protagonist of José Luis de Juan’s This Breathing World (1999),
is examined in four highly intertextual works by other writers.
The second part of the book explores Luis Antonio de Villena and Álvaro
Pombo, who in their diferent ways seek to coin their own defnitions of
homosexual experience in opposition both to the homophobic discourses
of the past and to the homonormative regimes of the commercialised and
trivialised gay culture of today. In their novels, ‘Mazuf’s gesture’ involves
playing a sophisticated queer game with readers and their expectations.