Mema's House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos by Annick Prieur, University of Chicago Press, 1998, 264 pp., S50.00 (cloth), S16.95 (paper). In Mema's House, Norwegian soci- ologist Annick Prieur explores the social construction of gender among effeminate working-class homosex- uals and transvestites in Mexico City (referred to as jotas or vestidas), and the "masculine" men or mayates who are their partners. Prieur exam- ines the ways in which jotas under- stand and live out their identities through a variety of corporal prac- tices, like body modification and sex. She also analyses their solidarity networks and familial relationships, and contrasts these to dominant cul- tural formations in the gay enclaves of North America and Europe. The book describes a community organized around the figure of Gerardo Rub6n Ortega Zurita, also known as "Mema," an AIDS educa- tor and former sex worker from Ciudad Nezahualc6yotl, a working- class district in Mexico City. The people whose lives and experiences form the core of this book, many of whom are adolescents, regularly vis- ited and sometimes lived in Mema's house-a safe space where they were free to dress up, listen to music, see boyfriends and have sex. The author also examines the other sites of social activity that comprise the cultural universe of thejotas and their mayates, giving her analysis remarkable ethnographic depth. While there is an extensive bibli- ography on Latin American homo- sexualities, authors rarely focus on how constructed notions of femini- nity mediate same-sex male desire, or on the elaborate negotiation of homosexual practices among "mas- culine" partners. Prieur challenges interpretations that present the role of the "active" partner in same-sex male intercourse as stigma-free, not- ing that she and other researchers have had difficulty finding infor- mants who would speak openly about such experiences. Instead of simply dismissing their silence, Prieur carefully develops a reading that accounts for it. The book's most valuable contri- bution is its discussion of the dif- ferences between the ideological discourses of appropriate identity traits and the constructions of self and sexual practices of her infor- mants. By linking effeminateness and homosexuality to a broader sex-gender grid-one in which men are located in opposition to women, but which also allows for gradations within these cate- gories-Prieur's study offers a more nuanced understanding of the relationships between gender, sexu- ality and identity than those that limit male homosexuality to the sphere of masculinity or that claim that male homosexuals are just like women. The author carefully differ- entiates perceptions of specific masculine and feminine traits and looks at the process by which indi- viduals incorporate some and reject others. She also offers a critical reading of accusations of homosex- uality among men, suggesting that these not only refer to actual homo- sexual practices, but also serve as a means of enforcing hierarchies of power and domination. Prieur does not offer her book as an all-encompassing framework for male homosexuality in Mexico. As she is careful to point out, upper- and middle-class men who engage in sex with men are more likely to follow European and North Ame- rican models of "gay" identity. Fin- ally, the author accounts for the im- pact her presence may have had on the findings of her research, offering an honest and refreshing contrast to other texts which fail to problema- tize such questions.
