Z

Zapata, Luis (b. 1951), Mexican author. Zapata is an open gay writer who discusses gay issues in his novels and short stories. His first novel, Hasta en las mejores familias (Even in the Best of Families, 1975), belongs to the literary movement of La Onda (Mexico’s New Wave). It is a first-person introspective account of middle-class values and the role of homosexuality in Mexican society. Las aventuras, desaventuras y sueños de Adonis García, el vampiro de la colonia Roma (Adonis García: A Picaresque Novel, 1979) is a celebration of homosexual love in the streets of Mexico City. It is an excellent novel, written in the form of the illogical stream of consciousness that was fashionable in the 1970s, and tells in vivid conversations what it is to be a poor, gay prostitute in a big, contemporary city. De pétalos peremnes (Perennial Petals, 1981) is a brief study of desire and social class in present-day Mexico: a maid and her employer share the same lover, each trying to fill a vacuum in their lives. En jirones (In Tatters, 1985), an explicit gay novel, tells the impossible love story between Sebastián and A. Sebastián’s love and desire for A. drive him to insanity and make him incapable of functioning as a social being. A. at the same time cannot conceptualise his homosexuality and marries a woman of his own social status. The literary use of pornography, the deliberate attempt to arouse the reader with the explicit sexual

scenes, and the melodramatic and soothing effect of using Juan Gabriel’s songs make this novel one of the most interesting texts ever written in Latin America.