Resistant Bodies in the Cultural Productions of Transnational Hispanic Caribbean Women: Reimagining Queer Identity

(Hardback)

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Resistant Bodies in the Cultural Productions of Transnational Hispanic Caribbean Women: Reimagining Queer Identity examines the art created by several Caribbean women who use literature, film, graphic novels, music, testimonios, photographs, etc. to convey social justice, democracy, and new ways of re/imaging marginal identities. In using Chela Sandovals theories on methodologies of the oppressed, Irune del Rio Gabiola argues how the tactics Sandoval offers can be productively applied to the cultural productions analyzed. The author explores how the protagonists of all the cultural productions this book focuses on developing tactics to create new possibilities and alternatives for self-fashioning. Particularly, del Rio Gabiola reconsiders concepts such as shame, failure, unbecoming, hermeneutics of love or flexible bodies as methodologies of the oppressed that propose decolonizing emancipatory techniques in a transnational arena.

Reviews

Irune del Rio Gabiolas work analyzes the lesbian body as a site that re-envisions notions of un/becoming, queer family, space, and belonging. Drawing on Chela Sandovals methodology of the oppressed, del Rio Gabiola carefully examines the work of Caribbean writers and artists and demonstrates how their particular representation of queer and transgendered bodies productively disrupts dominant notions of national identity and authority. This book brings together remarkable works from a diverse array of media (i.e. novel, graphic novel, hip hop, performance art) connected to their shared thematic attention to issues of gender, sexuality, and transnational mobility. del Rio Gabiola convincingly argues that these works, collectively, invite us to reimagine the power of the lesbian body. -- Dara E. Goldman, University of Illinois
Through centering queer bodies and experiences as a site of knowledge production, Resistant Bodies in the Cultural Productions of Transnational Hispanic Caribbean Women: Reimagining Queer Identity, is a welcomed addition to the emergent body of literature centered on the critical arts and social change. -- Tanya Saunders, University of Florida
Scholar Irune del Rio Gabiola is best known for her queer feminist perspective and interdisciplinarity. In Resistant Bodies, a meticulous sociocultural contextualization supports the solid construction of densely theoretical arguments, interweaving themes of family/home, corporality, philosophy, shame, and pride. Analyzing diverse media from photography to hip-hop, del Rio Gabiola celebrates the transnational performative empowerment of queer women of the Spanish speaking Caribbean. -- Sara E. Cooper, California State University, Chico

Author Bio

Irune del Rio Gabiola is associate professor of Spanish and director of the Gender, Women, and Sexuality Studies Program at Butler University.