TY - BOOK AU - Abercrombie, Thomas PY - 2019 TI - Passing to América T1 - Antonio (Née María) Yta’s Transgressive, Transatlantic Life in the Twilight of the Spanish Empire AB - In 1803 in the colonial South American city of La Plata, Doñ, a Martina Vilvado y Balverde presented herself to church and crown officials to denounce her husband of more than four years, Don Antonio Yta, as a “woman in disguise.” Forced to submit to a medical inspection that revealed a woman’s body, Don Antonio confessed to having been María Yta, but continued to assert his maleness and claimed to have a functional “member” that appeared, he said, when necessary.Passing to América is at once a historical biography and an in-depth examination of the sex/gender complex in an era before “gender” had been divorced from “sex.” The book presents readers with the original court docket, including Don Antonio’s extended confession, in which he tells his life story, and the equally extraordinary biographical sketch offered by Felipa Ybañez of her “son María,” both in English translation and the original Spanish. Thomas A. Abercrombie’s analysis not only grapples with how to understand the sex/gender system within the Spanish Atlantic empire at the turn of the nineteenth century but also explores what Antonio/María and contemporaries can teach us about the complexities of the relationship between sex and gender today.Passing to América brings to light a previously obscure case of gender transgression and puts Don Antonio’s life into its social and historical context in order to explore the meaning of “trans” identity in Spain and its American colonies. This accessible and intriguing study provides new insight into historical and contemporary gender construction that will interest students and scholars of gender studies and colonial Spanish literature and history. PB - Penn State University Press CY - Pensylvania KW - social history KW - cultural history KW - ethnography KW - praxiography KW - embodiment KW - indexicality KW - performativity KW - performance KW - theater KW - picaresque literature KW - self-fashioning KW - narrativity KW - narrative KW - autobiography KW - biography KW - Enlightenment KW - Early Modern Europe KW - Colonial Latin America KW - Spanish empire KW - Atlantic World KW - trans-Atlantic KW - Potosi KW - Buenos Aires KW - Peru KW - Bolivia KW - Argentina KW - Latin America KW - South America KW - Spanish America KW - Spain KW - heteronormativity KW - habitus KW - stigma KW - passing KW - sexuality KW - transgender KW - LGBTQIA KW - lesbian KW - queer KW - gender SN - 978-0-2710811-8-2 DO - 10.5325/book14 SE - 297