Sirena Selena: A Novel

by Mayra Santos-Febres

Other authorsStephen A. Lytle (Translator)

Paperback, 2001

Status

Checked out

Genres

Publication

Picador (2001), Edition: 1st, 224 pages

Description

Discovered by Martha Divine in the backstreets of San Juan, picking over garbage, drugged out of his mind and singing boleros that transfix the listener, a fifteen year old hustler is transformed into Sirena Selena, a diva whose uncanny beauty and irrisistable voice will be their ticket to fame and fortune. Auditioning for one of the luxury hotels in the Dominican Republic, Selena casts her spell over Hugo Graubel, one of the hotel's rich investors. Graubel is a powerful man in the Republic, married with children. Silena, determined to escape the poverty and abuse s/he suffered as a child, engages Graubel in a long seduction in this mordant, intensely lyrical tragi-comedy - part masque, part cabaret - about identity (class, race, gender) and "the hunger and desire to be other things."… (more)

User reviews

LibraryThing member GabbyF

For a book about transgender women in Puerto Rico, written by a cisgender author, it was okay. There is better transgender fiction written by transgender authors that does not include the same naïve sensationalism and othering that this book offered. The author missed the mark, and regurgitated

many common transgender stereotypes, such as confusing drag queens and transgender women, a misogynistic viewpoint that painted many of the characters as goldiggers, and too much emphasis on physical transitions, for the sake of shocking the audience.

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