From Cuba with Love: Sex and Money in the Twenty-First Century

by Megan Daigle

From Cuba with Love deals with love, sexuality, and politics in contemporary Cuba. In this beautiful narrative, Megan Daigle explores the role of women in Cuban political culture by examining the rise of economies of sex, romance, and money since the early 1990s. Daigle draws attention to the violence experienced by young women suspected of involvement with foreigners at the hands of a moralistic state, an opportunistic police force, and even their own families and partners. Investigating the lived realities of the Cuban women (and some men) who date tourists and offering a unique perspective on the surrounding debates, From Cuba with Love raises issues about women’s bodies–what they can or should do and, equally, what can be done to them. Daigle’s provocative perspective will make readers question how race and politics in Cuba are tied to women and sex, and the ways in which political power acts directly on the bodies of individuals through law, policing, institutional programs, and social norms.

Genres: Feminism, Sexuality

291 pages, Kindle Edition

First published January 26, 2015

Reviews

[Andres Cordoba]

A surprisingly good read as it went on, with a bit of a weak conclusion for all the important topics it covered. I found myself quite shocked with the depth of the approaches taken by the author and was pleased with the numerous connections to biopolitics made in reference to the many different conception of the jineteras. Quite disturbing in its many facets, I think it offers a critical evaluation of the country that I would also recommend Ruins in a fiction form for.

[Sophia Cordoba]

"It allows state anxieties about foreign invasion, as well as its ambivalent and conflicted engagement with the international tourism industry, to be displaced onto the bodies of young black and mixed-race women."

Compelling & eye-opening analysis of the image and reality of "jineteras," though the narration felt a bit stilted at times.