Lesbian images are everywhere these days?cable television, film, popular magazines, advertising, Internet and the news?creating desire in men and women alike, selling commercial products and services, and stirring up controversy on many levels. But do these images truly represent the diverse identities of women-centered women worldwide? This book addresses the limited access to images of diverse and international lesbian identities and experiences, in order to provide the reader with a more complete understanding of what it means to be lesbian in a global context. It investigates how lesbians portray themselves as well as how they are portrayed by others in several areas of popular culture, including television, film, the arts, Internet, advertising and the news. It features articles on U.S. lesbian cartoonists, Canadian viewer perceptions of lesbians on the cable show Queer as Folk, panoramic looks at lesbians' representation in Australian and Spanish television programming, and in-depth explorations of films by Spanish director Pedro Almod?var, leading Indian film producers, and independent Chinese-American filmmakers.

This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies.

Lesbian images are everywhere these days-cable television, film, popular magazines, advertising, Internet and the news-creating desire in men and women alike, selling commercial products and services, and stirring up controversy on many levels. But do these images truly represent the diverse identities of women-centered women worldwide? This book addresses the limited access to images of diverse and international lesbian identities and experiences, in order to provide the reader with a more complete understanding of what it means to be lesbian in a global context. It investigates how lesbians portray themselves as well as how they are portrayed by others in several areas of popular culture, including television, film, the arts, Internet, advertising and the news. It features articles on U.S. lesbian cartoonists, Canadian viewer perceptions of lesbians on the cable show Queer as Folk, panoramic looks at lesbians' representation in Australian and Spanish television programming, and in-depth explorations of films by Spanish director Pedro Almodovar, leading Indian film producers, and independent Chinese-American filmmakers. This book was published as a special issue of the Journal of Lesbian Studies.

The Ties That Bind comprises the first collection of critical essays that explore the family system in Spanish and Latin American culture. This thought-provoking volume addresses the intersection of language, narrative structure, social reality, and family dynamics through examples from a diverse range of literary works, including Cervantes' Don Quijote, Reinaldo Arenas' Celestino antes del alba, and the Chicano film My Family/Mi Familia. Issues of feminism, gender and sexuality, abuse, trauma, and communication take the forefront in this ground-breaking book, which takes psychological literary criticism a step beyond traditional psychoanalytical approaches.