The Rainbow Blog Philippines

Book Review on Literature and Literary Theory Professor Emilio Bejel's book "Gay Cuban Nation". This post was written by RBP team member line of flight from Sampaloc Toc . Emilio Bejel is a Professor of Spanish American literature and literary theory at the University of Colorado at Boulder. He wrote Gay Cuban Nation . Before I get into the substance of this book, I was totally offended that the University of Chicago Press would print a book with so many fucking typographical errors! Shame! Shame! Shame! The first few chapters were very fascinating. I know almost nothing about Cuban literature or gay Cuban literary history so that was interesting in itself. However, what was more fascinating was Bejel's ability to weave Cuban national history into the framework of the "rupture" at the end of the nineteenth century / beginning of the twentieth century regarding sexuality. Nakpil Zialcita's comment about Philippine academic disregard for everything Spanis...

Movie Review on American independent gay film "Rock Haven"(available at the Malaysian blog Filem Gay ). This post was written by RBP team member line of flight from Sampaloc Toc . First of all, I want to give a shout out to the Malaysian site, Filem Gay , for helping to catablog international gay cinema. I have watched many many gay films in my life and with the recent advances in editing technology and its greater accessibility to the middle class, I have to say that I have been unable to be aware of every gay film that has come out in the last ten years (there is just too many). I was roaming through Filem Gay's blog and stumbled onto Rock Haven . Filem Gay summarized: The coastal California community of Rock Haven is the perfect place for cute eighteen-year-old Brady and his loving mother to begin a fresh start. Their mission: to spread the word of the Lord. But while roaming the beach one day, Brady meets Clifford, a young man who is the complete opposite of him: ou...

Book Review on Anthropologist and Gender Studies Professor Gayatri Reddy's book "With Respect to Sex". This post was written by RBP team member line of flight from Sampaloc Toc . Gayatri Reddy is an Indian-American anthropologist and gender studies professor. Reddy's book is an ethnography of the transgender hijra of the southern Indian state of Andhra Pradesh. Reddy carefully recounts the tensions in life for the hijra that are specific to the cultural context like the road from rural life to urban hijra identity in Hyderabad and some of the more seemingly universal aspects of transgender collective identity regarding how the hijra form into hierarchical adopted families that enforce norms for the hijra identity with an "old-timer" at the apex of the hierarchical family. Her discussion of the negotiation between Hindu and Muslim identification is fascinating. (Hyderabad was a Muslim sultanate until after independence and if you ever go there, you can see i...

The world's first openly gay leader is poised to take power in Iceland with the appointment of a lesbian former flight attendant as Prime Minister following the mass-resignation of the country's government. Johanna Sigurdardottir, 66, is to become interim leader until new elections are held in May following the fall of the administration of Geir Haarde amid huge public protests about the country's economic crisis. The country's social affairs minister, Ms Sigurdardottir has been installed as head of an interim centre-left coalition featuring her Social Democratic Alliance and the Left-Green movement. "She is a senior parliamentarian, she is respected and loved by all of Iceland," said Environment Minister Thorunn Sveinbjarnardottir, a fellow Alliance party member. The new leader is known for allocating generous amounts of public funding to help the disabled, the elderly and organizations tackling domestic violence. http://news.aol.com