After Love: Queer Intimacy and Erotic Economies in Post-Soviet Cuba

by Noelle Stout

Focused on the intimate effects of large-scale economic transformations, After Love illuminates the ways that everyday efforts to imagine, resist, and enact market reforms shape sexual desires and subjectivities. Anthropologist Noelle M. Stout arrived in Havana in 2002 to study the widely publicized emergence of gay tolerance in Cuba but discovered that the sex trade was dominating everyday discussions among gays, lesbians, and travestis . Largely eradicated after the Revolution, sex work, including same-sex prostitution, exploded in Havana when the island was opened to foreign tourism in the early 1990s. The booming sex trade led to unprecedented encounters between Cuban gays and lesbians, and straight male sex workers and foreign tourists. As many gay Cuban men in their thirties and forties abandoned relationships with other gay men in favor of intimacies with straight male sex workers, these bonds complicated ideas about "true love" for queer Cubans at large. From openly homophobic hustlers having sex with urban gays for room and board, to lesbians disparaging sex workers but initiating relationships with foreign men for money, to gay tourists espousing communist rhetoric while handing out Calvin Klein bikini briefs, the shifting economic terrain raised fundamental questions about the boundaries between labor and love in late-socialist Cuba.
 

Genres: Anthropology, Nonfiction, LGBT

248 pages, Hardcover

First published January 1, 2014

About the author

Dr. Noelle Stout is a cultural anthropologist, feminist scholar, and an award-winning author and lecturer. Formerly an associate professor in the Department of Anthropology at New York University, Stout holds a research faculty position at Apple University and teaches at Stanford. She is the author of two books, Dispossessed: How Predatory Bureaucracy Foreclosed on the American Middle Class and After Love: Queer Intimacy and Erotic Economies in Post-Soviet Cuba. Stout earned a PhD from Harvard University, and a BAS and MA from Stanford University. She is a Northern California native and lives in the Bay Area with her family.

Reviews

[Shannyn Martin · Rating 5 out of 5]

I really got a lot out of reading this! My (very limited) understanding of contemporary Cuba has largely been based on news articles I've read here and there, and those often don't account for how nuanced a given topic may truly be, at least not as much as an ethnography like this one does. The author, Noelle Stout, conducted years of research in Cuba, beginning in the early 2000's and extending into the next decade, and she tells a story of a Cuba that is rife with contradictions, especially for the island's LGBTQ people, who are no longer hunted and imprisoned by an anti-LGBTQ regime but who nevertheless remain stigmatized and, in some cases, criminalized, especially when their queer identities intersect with other stigmatized identities associated with criminality and deviance. I was surprised to read about the rise of social and racial inequality after the collapse of the Soviet bloc and the subsequent rise of the tourism industry (and how Cubans weren't even allowed by the government to go into the same hotels and use the same taxis as Western tourists!), and how this, combined with exposure to pockets of capitalism and western consumer culture, led to the rise of black market economies like the sex trade, further exacerbating the emergence of social hierarchies and the association of queer identities with taboos like prostitution. It's interesting that these inequalities did not necessarily cause Cubans, including queer Cubans, to denounce socialism or the Castro government so, in that sense, it seems more accurate to view progress on LGBTQ rights there as a sort of continuum where queer Cubans are gradually being integrated into Cuban socialism and where cultural values about what is deemed acceptable by post-revolution standards are morphing and expanding to at least include respectable, "patriotic" queer people. There's a lot from this book that probably went over my head, as I am still in the early stages of familiarizing myself with Cuban history and politics, but I feel a lot more educated on the topic after reading this!

[Peta Garside · Rating 4 out of 5]

Read for a uni course but genuinely super interesting and something I never would have picked up just because it is such a niche topic. If you are interested in queer relations and economies, mixed in with some really engaging (and some pretty amusing) ethnographic vignettes I would recommend.

[Valleri · Rating 1 out of 5]

I hate this book; burn it to ash! This has nothing to do with the content, which is fine, relevant, and unique from all other ethnographies about prostitution. The verbage was boring, the pages were densely packed, and the presentation was lacking. But hey, I'll never have to read it again so that's a positive.

[Weston Scheck · Rating 5 out of 5]

I believe the observations that Stout is able to put together, and the concise and uniquely personal way that she weaves all these narratives into singular points, put this work far outside of the existing body of Queer scholarship, and questions much of what Western queers may take for advantage. The social and cultural impacts that come along with a changing economic system exist far outside of just GDP changes, the intimate ways in which this can occur are fully described by Stout's work. The organization of the book, moving from Cubans to foreign tourists was extremely effective, and really put together the visual of layers of hierarchy within the queer community of Cuba. Assumptions about queer acceptance, socialist humanitarianism, and market incentives are directly challenged, and there is no doubt that far more understanding exists just beyond the precipice of this book, especially as time has changed the legal standing of queers in Cuba.

[Sasha (bahareads) · Rating 4 out of 5]

I read for a graduate class

I highly recommend this book. I enjoyed it a lot, even for school. Noelle Stout explores boundaries between labor and love, and how these boundaries are blurred in practice. Her source material is 100 hours of formal and informal interviews with queer persons, sex workers, and tourists. Noelle Stout prefers subjectivity over identity and uses the word 'queer' to highlight the shifting nature of desire and fluidity of sexuality. She focuses on Cuban on Cuban relationships but looks at Cuban-tourist encounters. However 'tourist' is used as a broad encompassing term. She uses her experiences and reactions to relationships cultivated while in Cuba and the demand placed on them as a source of insight and is very transparent about it.

For the scholarship, Stout is targeting two distinct realms: (1) sexuality and (2) contemporary transnational capitalism that associates practices of love and intimacy with heterosexuality, excluding queer people. She builds on those who look at intimate economies (tangle of market and everyday intimacies) and counteracts superficial accounts of homosexuality in Cuba. She also looks at lesbians and bisexual women, not just gay men which uncovers how gender norms play a role in socially acceptable forms of homoeroticism. However Stout Focuses on people with nonconforming genders and sexuality to uncover the experiences and concerns of contemporary Cuban social life. She uses 'gay' as a gender-neutral word; saying terms are flexible by nature.

Stout argues that disagreements about intimacy in the context of rising inequality can teach us a lot about young Cubans in a post-Soviet nation. She says intimacy and desire are shaped and influenced by cultural meaning during the introduction of capitalism to Cuba during the 1990s and early 2000s. The study illuminates how people whose sexual desire is outside the mainstream failed to conform during the transition from communism to socialism. One significant piece of her work is to show that Skin colour played a huge role in people separating sex work from jineterismo; as blackness can = criminality in Cuba.

In talking about race, Noelle Stout brings in her own experiences of how she was perceived in Cuba. She has a whole paragraph dedicated to in. She says "Because I am light-skinned and blue-eyed, Cubans in Havana's queer nightlife often assumed that I was the tourist client of my American girlfriend..." whom they mistook as Cuban. Stout discusses her ethnicity, a "combination of French-Candian and Native American-Germn heritage." And I want to touch her hand when I say this - it's okay to be White presenting and to call yourself White while holding on to your ethnic heritage. She never explicitly calls herself a POC but that's what I was gathering from the paragraph.

Once again I highly recommend it. There's a lot to be said about the book but it's a great read, actually entertaining.

[Amelie Rudd · Rating 3 out of 5]

i feel so smart having read this. its full of tabs and sticky notes, do u know how i superior i feel because of that. please i dare you to ask me how i feel about the sex tourist/ regular tourist industry in cuba

but also stout does drop the ball a bit,, where are the lesbians and trans men stout,,, where are the butches??? she also cant help but fall back on western understandings and thoughts particularly when it comes to sex work. she also has a habit of bringing up issues that are bad, but then doesnt really dissect or challenge the ideas, especially when it comes to race. despite that, the book is really interesting and offers an extensive look into queer cuban life as well as the impacts of the erotic economy in cuba.

[Alison · Rating 2 out of 5]

Had to read for Uni, not really a book that I would have picked up to read. Topic interesting enough, but would have rather read an article than a whole book. An anthropological and ethnographical study of homosexuality in Cuba, focusing on the economic side of the 'business'. Some interesting anecdotes, but on the whole, felt like a book style thesis. Great for people who are into the topic. Can be read by older teens, but considering the topic, and the dryness of some of the writing, better an adult read.

[Re · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stout's investigation of LGBT life and the commodification of sex and love in Post-Soviet Cuba was enlightening, thoughtful, honest, and a truly fantastic read. I couldn't really put it down. I particularly enjoy the amount of words given to lesbian women, a rarity in these sorts of 'queer' texts. I would recommend this book to anyone who is interested in the interactions between sexuality, sex work and capital.

[Lucie · Rating 5 out of 5]

very biographical but feels like fiction - loving anthropology at the moment

[6655321 · Rating 5 out of 5]

Stout's anthropology of "gay" or "queer" life in Cuba under much more tolerant governance combined with a financial crisis and the allure of dollar economies of the sex trade is nuanced and entertaining and really cuts to the heart of how political and sexual values can become very muddled in transnational contexts.

[Sebastian Fuentes · Rating 5 out of 5]

A great discussion about the commodification of sex in Cuba post-Soviet subsidies.

[Lisa · Rating 4 out of 5]

Stout compelling explores queer sex work in Cuba. She weaves ideas about sexuality, history, capital, and desire into a narrative that blurs as much as it illuminates.

[John · Rating 4 out of 5]

Cuba Opening Up, Love to see what is happening Queer wise in Cuba 2015

[Mills College Library]

306.76609 S8895 2014