Imagining LatinX Intimacies. Edward A. Chamberlain
expected sites such as theaters (and unexpected) sites such as beaches and clubs, this chapter illuminates the way that Latinx queers are using spectacular sites to contest forces that silence queer Latinx peoples.
Taken together, these final chapters show how Latinx queers are using imaginative spaces to resist dominant ideologies and foster empathetic futures. In the epilogue, I extend this set of ideas to news coverage of the 2016 massacre at the Pulse Night Club, where forty-nine people were murdered and more than fifty people were injured.[77] The majority of the dead and injured in this queer space were Latinx, hence leading us to question what progress (if any) has been made in the past several decades. Amid this moment, consideration is given to how this egregious violence displaced queer people from a community center that served to unify a mix of diverse peoples. In studying such events, I revisit what many recently have called the myth of the American Dream by examining how queer Latinx youths remain vulnerable because of a lack of supportive spaces, ingrained bias, and exclusionary measures. The importance of advancing such dialogues was well articulated at the 2016 American Studies Association conference, where speakers highlighted how queer Latinx studies continues to be useful for addressing a range of sociopolitical issues today.[78] Such studies yield insights on the struggles faced by displaced peoples such as peoples living with HIV and youth of color that eschew sexual normativities. With these approaches, diverse advocates and scholars can better understand the complex socialities of Latinx sexualities in spatial contexts and the value of fostering an egalitarian ethic.
Notes
1.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa, Borderlands/La Frontera: The New Mestiza, 4th ed. (San Francisco: Aunt Lute Books, 1987 and 2012), 42. Citations refer to the 2012 edition.
2.
Latinx is used to speak to a range of gender experiences beyond the limitations of binaries including transgender and genderqueer experiences. See the following interview with Juana María Rodríguez: Sarah Hayley Barrett, “Latinx: The Ungendering of the Spanish Language,” LatinoUSA.org, last modified January 29, 2016, Web.
3.
Yolanda Martínez-San Miguel, Caribe Two Ways: Cultura de la migración en el Caribe insular hispánico (Ediciones Callejón, 2003), 28, 40.
4.
Deborah R. Vargas, “Ruminations on Lo Sucio as a Latino Queer Analytic,” American Quarterly 66, no. 3 (2014): 723.
5.
Juana María Rodríguez, Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices and Discursive Spaces (New York: New York University Press, 2003).
6.
Gloria E. Anzaldúa, “Preface: (Un)natural bridges, (Un)safe spaces,” This Bridge We Call Home: Radical Visions for Transformation, eds. Gloria E. Anzaldúa and AnaLouise Keating (New York: Routledge, 2002), 1.
7.
Marijn Nieuwenhuis and David Crouch, The Question of Space: Interrogating the Spatial Turn between Disciplines (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), x.
8.
Ernesto Javier Martínez, On Making Sense: Queer Race Narratives of Intelligibility (Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press, 2013), 105.
9.
Lauren Berlant and Michael Warner, “Sex in Public,” Critical Inquiry 24, no. 2 (1998): 558.
10.
Mary Pat Brady, Extinct Lands, Temporal Geographies: Chicana Literature and the Urgency of Space (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2002).
11.
Richard T. Rodríguez, Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics (Durham, NC: Duke University Press, 2009), 173.
12.
David Gere, How to Make Dances in an Epidemic: Tracking Choreography in the Age of AIDS (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2004); Anna Kline, Emma Kline, and Emily Oken, “Minority Women and Sexual Choice in the Age of AIDS,” Social Science and Medicine 34, no. 4 (1992): 447–57; Edmund White, Loss within Loss: Artists in the Age of AIDS (Madison: University of Wisconsin Press, 2002).
13.
John Mckiernan-González, “Health,” Keywords for Latina/o Studies, eds. Deborah R. Vargas, Nancy Raquel Mirabel, and Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes (New York: New York University, 2017), 79.
14.
Amy L. Fairchild and Eileen A. Tynan, “Policies of Containment: Immigration in the Era of AIDS,” American Journal of Public Health 84, no. 12 (December 1994): 2011–22; Cathy Lisa Schneider, “Racism, Drug Policy and AIDS,” Political Science Quarterly 113, no. 3 (Autumn 1998): 427–46.
15.
Hiram Pérez, A Taste for Brown Bodies: Gay Modernity and Cosmopolitan Desire (New York: New York University Press, 2015), 19.
16.
Sandra K. Soto, Reading Chican@ Like a Queer: The De-Mastery of Desire (Austin: University of Texas Press, 2010), 1.
17.
Luis H. Román Garcia, “In Search of My Queer Aztlán,” Queer Aztlán: Chicano Male Recollections of Consciousness and Coming Out, eds. Adelaida Del Castillo and Gibran Guido (San Diego: Cognella Academic Publishing, 2015), 317–18.
18.
Anthony C. Ocampo, “The Gay Second Generation: Sexual Identity and Family Relations of Filipino and Latino Gay Men,” Journal of Ethnic and Migration Studies 40, no. 1 (2013): 155–73.
19.
Alia Malek, “Moving Beyond the Label of ‘War Refugee,’” The New York Times Magazine, May 17 2019. Web.
20.
Elisa Garza, “Chicana Lesbianism and the Multigenre Text,” Tortilleras: Hispanic and U.S. Latina Lesbian Expression, eds. Lourdes Torres and Inmaculada Pertusa (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2003), 196–212.
21.
Adrienne Rich, Blood, Bread, and Poetry (New York: W. W. Norton, 1994).
22.
José Esteban Muñoz, Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York: New York University Press, 2009), 49.
23.
Von Diaz, “How Latino Activists Fought for Transgender Rights in Massachusetts,” Colorlines.com, November 15, 2013, Web.
24.
US Census Bureau, “Census Brief: Hispanic Owned Businesses,” October 2001.
25.
John Galeano, “On Rivers,” The Environmental Humanities, eds. Serpil Oppermann and Serenella Iovino (London: Rowman & Littlefield International, 2017), 331–38; Laura Pulido, Environmentalism and Economic Justice (Tucson: University of Arizona Press,1996); Catriona Sandilands, “Queer Ecology,” Keywords for Environmental Studies, eds. Joni Adamson, William A. Gleason, and David N. Pellow (New York: New York University Press, 2016), 169–71.
26.
Pulido, Environmentalism and Economic Justice, xv.
27.
Christina Holmes, Ecological Borderlands: Body, Nature and Spirit in Chicana Feminism (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2016).
28.
Oskaras Vorobjovas-Pinta and Brady Robards, “The Shared Oasis: An Insider Ethnographic Account of a Gay Resort,” Tourist Studies 17, no. 4 (2017): 383.
29.