The Influence of the Setting of Southern California in Queer Prose Anonymous College

In My Aztlan: White Place and Unprotected, Gil Cuadros (Latino poet and author who focused his work on queer poetry and short stories) uses the settings of San Bernardino County and West Los Angeles, specifically West Hollywood, to compare the culture and heritage of each place and how both places characterize the protagonist of both short stories. Cuadro incorporates very descriptive language of both the unnamed protagonist’s childhood homes in San Bernardino and a favorite place to spend time, the bar scene in West Hollywood, to characterize the struggles of homosexual, latino men in the 1980s. The use of cryptic language in conjunction with the same two settings and similar main characters of both short stories curates the major contrast between the two Southern California settings to symbolize the inner-struggles that the protagonists experience as gay, Latino men.

The cryptic language in “My Aztlan: White Place” is used as a way to show the literary context in which the short story portrays the sentiments of the protagonist. Even in the title, Cuadros specifically uses the phrase “Aztlan” of the first short story to display the significance of his hometown, as this phrase is significant in Latino communities as it...