This book is the first of its kind—a comprehensive account of transvestism and the performance of gender in Latin American literature and culture. It explores the figure of the transvestite and his/her relation to the body through a series of canonical Latin American texts. By analyzing works by Alejo Carpentier, José Donoso, Severo Sarduy, and Manuel Puig, alongside critical works in gender studies and queer theory, Sifuentes-Jauregui shows how transvestism operates not only to destabilize, but often to affirm sexual, gender, national, and political identities.