Mema's House, Mexico City: On Transvestites, Queens, and Machos

Mema opened his small house in Ciudad Nezahualcoyotl, a former squatter community on the outskirts of Mexico City, to the surprisingly large number of young effeminate men in the area and to Norwegian sociologist Prieur, whom he had met at an AIDS conference. Prieur spent six months, on and off, literally sharing a bed with Mema while his other guests slept on the floor. Her aim was to find out why these men live their lives ""as feminine men in a society where masculinity really counts, where it is of the utmost social importance."" Much of what Prieur finds out is pretty grim: Many of these men earn their livings as prostitutes, while the families who live off their earnings despise them. People in the neighborhood enjoy their banter but would not help if one of the vestidas were attacked. They steal, take drugs and are the perpetrators and victims of frequent violence. Prieur gets so wrapped up in this world that she comes to understand how ""selling sex could be a way to gain independence, taking drugs a way to get some entertainment, stealing a way to win self-respect, that violence is just the order of things and that sexual experience is the meaning of life."" Prieur limited her time with Mema to short stays, and the rest of the book is a study of Mexican gender roles and where these men fit in. This is a sociological study, but the people in it are both so poignant and infuriating that they make Mema's House a fascinating read. 15 halftone photos not seen by PW. (Jan.)