ˮƵ the author:Kristie Soares is an Assistant Professor of Women & Gender Studies and Co-Director of LGBTQ Studies at the University of Colorado Boulder. I am also a performance artist. Both my research and my performance work explore queerness in Caribbean and Latinx communities.
ˮƵ the book:Joy is a politicized form of pleasure that goes beyond gratification to challenge norms of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Kristie Soares focuses on the diasporic media of Puerto Rico and Cuba to examine how music, public activist demonstrations, social media, sitcoms, and other areas of culture resist the dominant stories told about Latinx joy. As she shows, Latinx creators compose versions of joy central to social and political struggle and at odds with colonialist and imperialist narratives that equate joy with political docility and a lack of intelligence. Soares builds her analysis around chapters that delve intodzԻin salsa music, precise joy among the New Young Lords Party,dzٱin the comedy¿Qué Pasa U.S.A.?,́in the life and death of Celia Cruz,岹as Pitbull’s signature affect, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez’s use of silliness to take political violence seriously.
Daring and original,examines how Latinx creators resist the idea that joy only exists outside politics and activist struggle.