Eduardo Lalo's Simone: A Heterosexist Fantasy of the Asian Lesbian

• In Event: Orientalism Decentered: An Inside and Outside Look at the Periphery in Contemporary Latin American Literature

Abstract

In 2012, the novel "Simone", by Puerto Rican author Eduardo Lalo, was awarded the Premio Internacional de Novela Rómulo Gallegos, the most important award of its kind in Latin America. "Simone" has been praised on account of its formal achievements, as well as for its effort to portray some fictional members of the Chinese community in Puerto Rico, a community regarded as "invisible" in a country that, for accurate, geopolitical reasons, the author himself has described in the same way.

In this presentation, however, I argue that "Simone" shares similarities with Cortázar's "Rayuela" not only in terms of form and plot, but also in terms of ethics. Both Cortázar and Lalo coincide in their characterization of women as Other, as language itself, as that which lies beyond the subject, and yet, constitutes him, while simultaneously threatening to undo him. This problematic vision of woman as a stand-in, an ideal, is compounded in Lalo's text by the fact that "Simone" is an alias for Li Chao, a Chinese woman who self-identifies as a lesbian, but develops an amorous relationship with the narrator. I argue that Li Chao's characterization as "a radical Otherness", as an incarnation of the lady in the drama of courtly love, is problematic, because it hinges on stereotypes about Asian women and "the Orient", just as the focus on the narrator's penetration of Li Chao, a lesbian, constructs a heterosexist fantasy made even more implausible by the suggestion that she may be queer on account of having been raped by a male cousin when she was a child.

In other words, I suggest that the novel that has been applauded for its innovations tells, in fact, a fairly trite tale, the heterosexist one of a man "turning" a lesbian, whose characterization, because she is Chinese, corresponds to the stereotype of the mysterious, cold, cerebral, infantile, and yet sexually-gifted Asian woman.

Author

• Juan P Rivera, Clark University