Orozco, Cynthia E.

English

University of New Mexico

Colonial Latin American Historical Review
Volume 9
Issue 1 Volume 9, Issue 1 (Winter 2000) Article 8
12-1-2000
Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds.,
The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in
Colonial Latin America
Cynthia E. Orozco
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Recommended Citation
Orozco, Cynthia E.. "Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial
Latin America." Colonial Latin American Historical Review 9, 1 (2000): 140. https://digitalrepository.unm.edu/clahr/vol9/iss1/8

BOOK REVIEWS 141 
class and was able to escape punishment for "sodomy." Spurling's piece adds 
significantly to the discussion of gayness in the colonial era. Lesbians' 
"queer" or shameless expressions of love and dishonor still require attention 
from researchers. 
Muriel Nazzari addresses gender, class/race, and parents of 
illegitimate children in late-eighteenth-century Brazil. Concerned with honor 
and shame, she found that white mothers were more likely to abandon their 
illegitimate children than were pardo (colored) women. A second essay on 
Brazil, by Sandra Lauderdale Graham, utilizes several divorce court cases by 
ex-slaves in the nineteenth century to examine how non-elites dealt with "a 
slave code of domestic and marital honor" (p. 224). In one case, husband 
Rufino beat his wife Henriqueta for what he called her lack of being 
"honesta" (p. 222). 
Some questions, however, still remain. How is honor tied to the 
conquest of the Americas and ensuing gendered violence? How does honor 
differ from machismo? Johnson and Lipsett-Rivera have gathered a number 
of excellent essays on this important topic. This work is useful for courses on 
women, gender, sexuality, and ideology. 
Cynthia E. Orozco 
Chicano Studies Program 
University of New Mexico 


Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America

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Lyman L. Johnson and Sonya Lipsett-Rivera, eds., The Faces of Honor: Sex, Shame and Violence in Colonial Latin America

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