This blog was inspired by the book, Queer Latinidad by Juana Rodriguez.

Chapter 1: Diva, Atrevida, y Entendidas

This chapter introduces the reader to her discussion topic, simply: identity. She begins using the phrase “subject-in-process” as an identifier for her assertions of the fluidity of identity. Stating that “in-process” does not indicate a “unidirectional” development, calling identity development “spastic” and “unpredictable.” She does mean to indicate that identity is continually developing, it is not static and is always reflecting and engaging with personal, social, and political for contexts and meaning. (pg 6)

Chapter 2: Activism and Identity in the Ruins of Representation

Rodriguez begins this chapter with a statement about activism, “an engagement with hauntings of history, a dialogue between memories of the past and the imaginings of the future manifested through the acts of our own present yearning,” (p.36). This is, as she puts it, a haunting chapter, exploring the activism that was created around the HIV/AIDS epidemic. She asserts that much of the activism was both Eurocentric and heteronormative, causing even greater exclusion and health disparities in multiply oppressed minorities. She makes a point to point out the disproportionate number of Puerto Ricans infected, even in relation to other minorities the US, like Mexicans. She builds upon a point that the identies that minorities create for themselves in order to build strength, unity, clarity, and power are very often usurped by the government to create legal categories from which persons can then not escape; self created identity becomes a self created prison. Rodriguez’s example of fluid activism is an organization  Her example of fluid identity and activism is the organization Proyecto ContraSIDA pro Vida, which provides an enormously varied array of services, including needle exchange, sex education on any topic imagineable, couches for safe retreat from the street, art classes, group discussion, performances, and so many more. They use hybrid language in their literature of street Spanish and english, because of their mixed patrons and their location in the heart of the Mission District of San Francisco.

Chapter 3: The Subject on Trial Reading In re Tenorio as Transnational Narrative

This chapter is dedicated to using the politically momentous trial of a gay man seeking political asylum in the United States from his residence in Rio de Janiero, Brazil on the basis of his sexuality. Rodriguez was able to read the trial notes. She uses the trial as an example of self proclaimed identity becoming a trap, the loss of real, dynamic identity to one politicized marker of identity and the propagandized media portrayal both from the US and Brazil in reaction to the trial.

Chapter 4: “Welcome to the Global Stage”: Confessions of a Latina Cyber Slut

Although the whole book is a reflection of the experiences and view points of the author, this chapter is extremely intimate. It gives personal accounts of and an analysis of Rodriguez’s online sexual adventures and experiments. She uses her own experience to explore the formation identity and how when some emotional barriers are removed, like carnal consequences, our identity may expand to surprising arenas.