Description
Book SynopsisA historical biography of Don Antonio Yta, denounced in 1803 as a woman masquerading as a man. Examines the sex/gender complex within the Spanish Atlantic empire.
Trade Review“Abercrombie’s thrilling account of the life of Don Antonio Yta follows the surprising twists and turns of a nun in a Spanish convent turned male bishop's page, governor's servant, and town administrator in Italy and the Americas. With depth and meticulousness, Passing to América reveals the possibilities and limitations that race and gender afforded individuals who, like Don Antonio, sought to pass as a gender different from the one assigned to them at birth.”
—Marta V. Vicente,author of Debating Sex and Gender in Eighteenth-Century Spain
“Approaching the story of Don Antonio Yta, and the María he was before, is bound to pull us into a thicket of contemporary debates about gender and sexual identities. Thomas Abercrombie is a skillful guide, letting the reader get tangled where necessary by including primary sources and playing in ambiguities but also pointing to ways out. Particularly impressive is how Abercrombie places gender and sexual practices within a context of multiple other factors that impacted the lives of Don Antonio and María, from Spanish peninsular class status to immigrant experiences in the New World during the apogee of an Enlightenment science of self and other.”
—Bianca Premo,author of The Enlightenment on Trial: Ordinary Litigants and Colonialism in the Spanish Empire
“Abercrombie relays the story of Antonio (née María) Yta's movements from Spain to Bolivia, and from seeming woman to apparent man, with remarkable detail and insight gleaned from the twenty years of research whose fruits are so evident in these pages. This book makes a strong contribution to transgender studies historical scholarship, and it supplies the best case study of the complexities of colonial gender in the Americas since the fabled tale of the Lieutenant Nun, Antonio (née Catalina) de Erauso.”
—Susan Stryker,author of Transgender History
“Thomas Abercrombie’s Passing to América is the surprising story of how the materiality of clothing and the deportment associated with status and honor, rather than the body itself, defined sex in the Spanish Monarchy in the Age of Revolutions. Abercrombie brilliantly uses this story of Don Antonio Yta to challenge current interpretations of the primacy of the body in trans-gender identity.”
—Jorge Cañizares-Esguerra,author of How to Write the History of the New World
“Indeed, Tom’s book crosses many disciplinary frontiers, for Passing to América is historical biography at its most intriguing, but also an in-depth look at the sex-gender complex at a time in history when both sex and gender were understood and performed very differently. Tom Abercrombie’s extraordinary life work has created its own pathway of memory and knowledge, for which we all can be profoundly grateful.”
—Brooke Larson Colonial Latin American Review
“This book is highly recommended for courses in the history of global sexuality and should be required reading for understanding gendered history in Latin America.”
—Nicole von Germeten Hispanic American Historical Review
Table of ContentsList of Illustrations
Preface and AcknowledgmentsCast of CharactersYta’s BiochronologyIntroduction: Exposure1 Confession: Self-Fashioning and the Involuntary Autobiography2 Habits: María’s Apprenticeships in a Cross-Dressing Culture3 Passages: The Passing Privileges of Don Antonio’s Sartorial Modernity in América4 Means and Ends: Zenith and Nadir of a Social Climber5 Afterlives: Alternative Emplotments of Don Antonio’s Literary Lives6 Truth: “True Sex,” Passing, and the Consequences of DeceptionConclusion: Narrations, Enactments, and Bodily PleasureAppendix A: The ExpedienteAppendix B: Auxiliary DocumentsGlossaryNotesReferencesIndex
