Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces

by Juana María Rodríguez

An examination into queer identity in relation to Latino/a America

According to the 2000 census, Latinos/as have become the largest ethnic minority group in the United States. Images of Latinos and Latinas in mainstream news and in popular culture suggest a Latin Explosion at center stage, yet the topic of queer identity in relation to Latino/a America remains under examined.

Juana María Rodríguez attempts to rectify this dearth of scholarship in Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces , by documenting the ways in which identities are transformed by encounters with language, the law, culture, and public policy. She identifies three key areas as the project’s case studies: activism, primarily HIV prevention; immigration law; and cyberspace. In each, Rodríguez theorizes the ways queer Latino/a identities are enabled or constrained, melding several theoretical and methodological approaches to argue that these sites are complex and dynamic social fields.

As she moves the reader from one disciplinary location to the other, Rodríguez reveals the seams of her own academic engagement with queer latinidad. This deftly crafted work represents a dynamic and innovative approach to the study of identity formation and representation, making a vital contribution to a new reformulation of gender and sexuality studies.

Genres: Nonfiction, Queer, Race, LGBT, Theory, Queer Studies, History

227 pages, Paperback

First published January 1, 2003

Reviews

[Nic · Rating 4 out of 5]

Here’s what I wrote my second time reading Rodriguez’s Queer Latinidad:

“I didn’t like this book nearly as much the first time. But after having grown as a reader and hopefully a thinker, I appreciate why this book had/has been such a staple in Latinx studies. In a way, the book is a culmination of post-modernist strains of feminist of color theory (Norma Alarcón’s work especially). Although some aspects of it feel dated, the book’s critique of identity politics feels worth revisiting. Some of the more creative passages might feel a little too meandering for many readers (a quirk of NYU’d Sexual Cultures series), but I found they did make reading an academic text less tiresome without taking away from the work’s rigor. The Epilogue better explains this stylistic choice, which was quite daring for a first book. Rodriguez’s second book is better and this third book Puta Life (my initial thoughts) is an absolute masterpiece that I can’t wait to dig more into.”

My third time through, I’ll add that Chapter’s 1 & 2 are still terrific, Chapter 3 is slightly dated but a good reading of Tenório’s trial transcript, Chapter 4 is still my least favorite but it also makes for an interesting, if not exemplary, component to her argument. As I’m shifting to thinking about my own first book project, I find myself humbled by this extraordinary and accomplished queer Latina critic.

[Osvaldo · Rating 3 out of 5]

I found the introduction very helpful in conceptualizing some aspects of my academic work, but the rest of the book lost me, not because it wasn't interesting (in particular the chapter on queer Latina identity in the virtual spaces of IRC chatrooms), but because it was not as broadly applicable to the literary underpinnings of my own project.

[Sahel's · Rating 5 out of 5]

I truly loved this book! What an honest narrator, researcher and scholar!So the first pages of chapter one read like hard theory books and then everything suddenly eases down! Rodriquez's writing style is interesting and engaging. Her description of stereotypes of men and women for media and tourism industry are fascinating. She theorizes, but at the same type opens her chapters with story-like realities. One of the books that I wholeheartedly and excitedly give a five-star to! There is a sentence from the text that reads "identity is slippery stuff"! To me, this sentence somehow summarizes whatever she is going to say, theory wise. Identity is unidirectional and monolithic. It is always being reconstructed in conversation with society and different personas. Identity is constantly being read and reframed and retranslated. Rodriguez has written about identities and stereotypes in places she calls "discursive spaces" (6). Like in public, in bars, restaurants, chatrooms, etc.The fact that ethnic identities with any certain sexual preferences get created is because these identities have had to make meaning of themselves in contrast to the colonizers and their concept of normativity.

[Bill Brydon · Rating 5 out of 5]

just as “queer”can function as a noun or as a verb, “gesture”can signal both those defined movements that we make with our bodies and to which we assign meaning, and an action that extends beyond itself, that reaches, suggests, motions; an action that signals its desire to act, perhaps to touch. Gestures emphasize the mobile spaces of interpretation between actions and meaning. Gestures hang and fall; they register the kinetic effort of communication. Even when done in private, gestures are always relational; they form connections between different parts of our bodies; they cite other gestures; they extend the reach of the self into the space between us; they bring into being the possibility of a “we.”

[Sabrina · Rating 3 out of 5]

Another book assigned for class that I got more than halfway through but not all the way through due to which chapters were assigned, so. I'll likely go back and finish it when I have more time but it's another one of those that should count for half... Good book though!

[Susan · Rating 4 out of 5]

The other thing I'm writing this week, the fun thing, due to my editor in two weeks, is an essay on transsexual sadomasochism as embodiment theory. It revolves around a particular dungeon space in San Francisco's Mission District in the early 1990s. Rodriguez's book on Queer Latinidad, which has as one if its main foci the Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida, looks at the same neighborhood from a different perspective. Just comparing notes. Funny, reading books about places and people you know as if they are history, which I guess they are.

[Larry Fountain · Rating 5 out of 5]

A very important contribution to queer & LGBT Latina/o studies.