Chicano writers have tended to gravitate toward themes of cultural, racial, and political tensions in their work, while not explicitly focusing on issues of identity or gender and sexuality, in comparison to the work of Chicana writers. Chicanos who were marked as overtly gay in early Chicana/o literature, from 1959 to 1972, tended to be removed from the Mexican-American "barrio" and were typically portrayed with negative attributes, as examined by Daniel Enrique Pérez, such as the character of "Joe Pete" in "Pocho" and the unnamed protagonist of John Rechy's "City of Night" (1963). However, other characters in the Chicano canon may also be read as queer, such as the unnamed protagonist of Tomás Rivera's "...y no se lo tragó la tierra" (1971), and "Antonio Márez" in Rudolfo Anaya's Bless Me, Ultima (1972), since, according to Pérez, "these characters diverge from heteronormative paradigms and their identities are very much linked to the rejection of heteronormativity."