Relocations: Queer Suburban Imaginaries

by Karen Tongson

What queer lives, loves and possibilities teem within suburbia's little boxes? Moving beyond the imbedded urban/rural binary, Relocations offers the first major queer cultural study of sexuality, race and representation in the suburbs. Focusing on the region humorists have referred to as "Lesser Los Angeles"--a global prototype for sprawl--Karen Tongson weaves through suburbia's "nowhere" spaces to survey our spatial imaginaries: the aesthetic, creative and popular materials of the new suburbia.

Across southern California's freeways, beneath its overpasses and just beyond its winding cloverleaf interchanges, Tongson explores the improvisational archives of queer suburban sociability, from multimedia artist Lynne Chan's JJ Chinois projects and the amusement park night-clubs of 1980s Orange County to the imperial legacies of the region known as the Inland Empire. By taking a hard look at the cosmopolitanism historically considered de rigeur for queer subjects, while engaging with the so-called "New Suburbanism" that has captivated the national imaginary in everything from lifestyle trends to electoral politics, Relocations radically revises our sense of where to see and feel queer of color sociability, politics and desire.

Genres: Queer, Theory, Nonfiction, LGBT, Philosophy, Gender and Sexuality, Cultural Studies

299 pages, Paperback

First published August 1, 2011

Reviews

[James Factora · Rating 3 out of 5]

I really wanted to like this more than I did — a queer theory text by a Filipino lesbian about “queer of color” subcultures in the suburbs of SoCal? Sign me up. But by the end, I found myself frustrated by the book’s lack of engagement with Black and Indigenous queer folk, whose histories and subcultures should be essential to any kind of “queer of color” documentation. Like, the book analyzed Gwen Stefani’s harajuku era (which IS relevant) but only meaningfully engages w/ Black queer thought in a few places — and that engagement is a refutation of supposedly homonormative “urban narratives” pushed by Samuel Delany. Perhaps part of the problem, and why I’m using scare quotes, is the vagueness of the term “queer of color.” In the context of this book, that mainly means Asians and Chicanos. I also found the book’s objects of analysis a tad myopic, though I understand that part of that stems from an attempt to document “queer of color” subcultures. There are a lot of useful takeaways here, but those takeaways for me are, once again, marred by a lack of meaningful engagement with Black and Indigenous queer communities and histories. You’re telling an incomplete story by mentioning Compton without talking about Black people, and by critiquing the imperial legacy of the suburbs without mentioning the indigenous populations of “southern California” who have been the most profoundly impacted by these displacements and subsequent relocations.

That being said, if anyone has any recommendations for historical/theoretical texts on Black and/or Indigenous queer cultures of SoCal (or anywhere) I welcome them.

[Emily · Rating 5 out of 5]

CAN I GIVE THIS BOOK TEN STARS?
I don't know if I really "got" all of it, but even so, it challenged my perceptions about suburbia. I've lived in the suburbs for most of my life, and always hated them, but this book helped me look at my surroundings in a different way. And that is the best sort of book, I think!

[Ann · Rating 4 out of 5]

Tongson focuses a lot on the music that she believes helps typify Southern California (primarily Orange County) living, and at times I felt like making the book a study on the region's soundscapes would have been a better focal point -- while I did overall enjoy Tongson's thoughts on gender and race, there were times when they felt secondary to her study on music, particularly in the Gwen Stefani section. Tongson -- while acknowledging the racism implicit in Stefani's harajuku girls -- just as quickly dismisses it in favor of championing Stefani's Love. Angel. Music. Baby. album as the exemplar form of O.C. 80s/90s subcultural dance club sound, which I found odd considering her point that the subcultural does not always consist of white bodies; choosing white suburbanite Stefani's music felt bizarre.

I enjoyed it overall, and I want to watch The O.C. now.

[Mandy · Rating 4 out of 5]

This book is sprawling, like the suburbs and highway systems Tongson writes about, but - surprisingly - it never gets too overwhelming in its disorientation. Although I had some issues with her conception of "the rural" and have very few suburban experiences myself, I liked her theorization of the suburbs as "queer imaginaries" and as places for queers to return to, since they are so often figured as homogenous zones of heteronormativity that queers must/want to leave. The only con that I remember three months after reading the book: While Tongson is quite clear about her decision to focus almost solely on the suburbs of southern California, I would've liked more about those implications for the rest of the US.

[Amy D.P. · Rating 5 out of 5]

Tongson does an amazing job of highlighting queers of color in conjunction with queer temporalities in the Southern California area. So, she really doesn't write queer theory regularly? Could have fooled me!