Sex and Danger in Buenos Aires: Prostitution, Family, and Nation in Argentina

history of Latin American women has received increased attention from scholars in the last twenty years. The history of gender relations in the region has barely begun, however, and one could say the same of the historical study of prostitution and sexuality. Donna book is an important and imaginative contribution to the literature on all these topics.--The Americas. A significant contribution to the study of how marginal women (and men) have helped define social, economic, and political acceptability...The author's goal--to show the 'relationship of female sexual commerce to family, class, and nation'--is realized in a very readable analysis of mid-nineteenth- to mid-twentieth-century Argentina from the perspective of the underworld of prostitutes, bordellos, and international white slavery rings.--Hispanic American Historical Review. Guy's well-organized study of a vast array of social, political, and cultural currents will be of interest to scholars of comparative women's studies and to historians who are engaged in the complicated task of integrating the study of gender relations into economic, political, and social history.--American Historical Review. Guy's study is a salutary reminder of how deeply prostitution influences the politics of nationalism, of social control and of cultural identity, not just in Argentina but in Europe as well.--Manchester Guardian. Donna J. Guy, a professor of history at the University of Arizona, is the author of Argentine Sugar Politics: Tucuman and the Generation of Eighty.