No Shame in this Queer Thang: Sex, Place, and Belonging in Charles Rice-Gónzales Chulito
This paper analyzes depictions of sex within Charles Rice-González’s novel, Chulito, which focuses on the sixteen-year-old Puerto Rican American Chulito as he grapples with the impact of his same-sex
desires on his place within his South Bronx community. I argue
that sex in the novel functions as (1) a resistance to notions of shame that suggest queer sex as base or deviant by representing intimate and a!rming acts of sex; and (2) a challenge to boundaries of belonging as it couches these depictions within reflections on
its actors’ understandings of their neighborhood and place within its
community.