After the closet: An interview with fictionist Gerardo Torres

• Main Author: Littaua, Patricia Fatima E.
• Format: text
• Language: English
• Published: Animo Repository 2011
• Subjects: Homosexuality > Literary collections; Gay men > Literary collections; Homosexuality and literature > Philippines; Comparative Literature
• Online Access: https://animorepository.dlsu.edu.ph/etd_bachelors/2454
• Institution: De La Salle University

This study is an exploration of the heart and mind of gay fictionist Gerardo Torres. It is mainly done through an interview with Torres to understand his creative life as a writer, his literary techniques and his fundamental ideas regarding homosexuality. His two collections, Pink Men in Love and other stories (2005) and Kulay Rosas Ang Pintig ng Puso: Mga Maikling kwento (2009) will be used as points of reference. The notion that sexuality is always embedded in one's writing is a crucial idea in examining the characters in both his works. This thesis ends with an essay synthesizing the main ideas generated from the interview. Torres is a romantic fictionist who uses art as a form of expression. His stories are his own way of coping with the realities he faces as a homosexual. He expresses his sentiments on being a homosexual in his stories. The collections are a depiction of homoerotica and gay love [which] marks it out as a gay's artist's quivering attempt to come out of the closet of self-contempt, into the bigoted open (Garcia, Slip/Pages 7). Major themes include: living the gay life, the futility of loving a heterosexual man, love and betrayal and sacrifice. Nonetheless, Torres has affirmed his homosexuality by coming out and by writing about his experiences as a homosexual to offer his readers complex characterizations of gay men. Torres challenges the stereotypical notion of gays as sex-starved human beings, and he also utilizes different fictional forms and techniques to explore their otherness and narrate their unique and compelling stories.