Bibliographical Information Daigle, Megan. From Cuba with Love: Sex and Money in the Twenty-First Century. University of California Press, 2015. Summary of the main thesis In this book, the author seeks to understand how bodies are governed in Cuba, specifically the bodies of young women of certain ethnicities and not others. One of the central concepts that the author explores is jineterismo, as a sexual practice where young Cuban women engage in sexual activities with foreigners, but in a grey area between economic gain, love, and sexual desire (Daigle 12). Thus, using this concept as a backdrop, the author wants to answer the question of why young black or mixed-race women are governed differently by the state (Daigle 12). Indeed, the author …show more content…
In chapter three, Daigle discusses the actions of women who resist in certain ways the weight and punishment of law enforcement in Cuba by subverting the role of the jinetera and defying institutions (Daigle 120). This idea connects to Nagel's description of racialized, ethnicized and nationalized ideas of womanliness, as young Cuban jineteras are stereotyped, yet they assume these ideas and seek ways to subvert them (Nagel 31). On the other hand, in chapter four the author discusses the role of the Cuba state in enforcing one idea of sexuality, one idea of the Revolution, while socially jineterismo is accepted, the state paints it as deviant (Daigle 156). This matches Nagel's definition of the moral boundaries of the state, which includes sexuality, and the way the state can deem someone deviant, as well as using the punishment of deviance as a form of enforcing the rules of the state and the morality of the nation (Nagel 147). While on the fifth chapter Daigle discusses how young Cubans use their bodies and their sexual practices as jineteras as a form of political resistance, as opposed to traditional forms of activism that are prohibited in that country (Daigle 197). This shows a connection to Nagel's description of globalization and ethnosexual tourism, because this new market allows young Cubans to engage with the …show more content…
The social construction of ethnicity and its role in people's sexuality, as understood by Nagel, marks the vast differences between two groups that might live in the same geographical space but whose lives are not the same. In the case of Cuba, jineteras live differently than other young Cubans due to their specific intersection of race, gender, sexuality, and ethnicity that marks them a certain way. Therefore, the ideas explored here are useful to apply them in other scenarios where social and cultural differences arise among groups that do understand each other because of
In Ada Maria Isasi-Diaz Mujerista Discourse: A platform for Latinas’ Subjugated Knowledge, she talks about the term “Lo Cotidiano” which translates to “the everyday” (Isasi-Diaz pg. 46), and she explains how this term is more complex than the actual meaning. She also explains that ‘lo cotidiano’ and the way every person lives their ‘cotidiano’ connects with the main idea of Mujerista Discoourse. In her writing, she discusses some personal experiences which bring a better understanding to the true meaning of lo ‘cotidiano’. Isasi-Diaz gives an in-depth explanation to what ‘lo cotidiano’ really means, or what it should mean.
Dreaming in Cuban by Cristina Garcia emphasizes the intense connections and relations among three generations of Cuban women during the Cuban revolution. Their memories, dreams and hopes are gradually revealed and connected, and the importance to them of Cuba and what it means to be Cuban is explored. Every character in the novel Dreaming in Cuban has been through a specific struggle, whether it is physical, psychological or even both. The novel focuses on the similarities of their different experiences of each character, and the family ties, intuitions, and dreams that bind them together. One of the most dynamic characters in the novel is Pilar.
In “Family Values” by Richard Rodriguez, the author first begins on a bit of a personal note, setting up the scene for the reader. Readers immediately learn that Rodriguez is sitting in a car outside of his parents’ home, debating on how to tell his family that he is in fact homosexual. The author then begins to expand on the term “family values” by introducing different opinions of what family values means to different cultures. For example, in traditional American culture it is common for the children to move out and find their own way in the world. They are expected to, as Rodriguez puts it, “become [their] own man” (257).
Throughout history the inferiority of women has been prevalent for hundreds of years, and some countries tried to close the gap, one of them being cuba which ensued, following the overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, Fidel Castro now began to implement his vison for Cuba based off of his communist ideologies. Like Mao Zedong in China Castro looked towards women being one of the groups for support in Cuba. By 1990 many had felt that women’s lives had been changed for better, and now were able to partake in learning and jobs that weren’t available to them before the revolution; however others argued that more had to be done to remove the fragments of patriarchy that had still existed; Although it appeared the revolution had advanced the equality for women in
The societal norm for Dominican males indicates male approval of activities that if otherwise applied to women would be criticized. Males are encouraged to announce and celebrate their sexual actions as yet another affirmation of patriarchal dominance in which males withhold power over women. When discussing Dominican-ness, Oscar states that he “heard from a reliable source that no Dominican male had ever died a virgin,” emphasizing the importance of sexual activity among males (174). By speaking of sexual experience as such a crucial component to fulfilling the Dominican heteronormative expectation, Oscar is reiterating the point of sexual goals and merits. It is important to note that men are designated the task of taking virginity from women rather than losing their own.
According to a male Cuban revolutionary, he and most of the older generation were against women’s liberation because they expected a woman to do household work (Doc #3). He was strongly against women’s liberation because he was used to patriarchy, to women serving men and, thus, thought that a woman “owes herself to me [him] and the children”. There was most likely a strong opposition from men regarding women’s liberation that made equality harder to achieve. This opposition slowed down the country’s progress on feminism and women right’s because they still treated women as servants born to do housework. Because of a lack of participation from men, women still had the responsibility of doing household work plus the responsibility to work, resulting in an unfair double work shift (doc #10).
Sandra Cisneros, the author of the book The House on the Mango Street, conveys that girls or women do not have as much freedom as guys do, the girls or women are always ruled or controlled by someone mostly male, and they always have to be the one to follow the rules. As Esperanza grows up she observes many girls who are in the conditions that they are not supposed to be in. The girls have no freedom and they are always supposed to listen to the guy in the family. One observation Esperanza observes is that girls are controlled by men all the time and because of listening to men those girls are locked inside. For example as Esperanza says, “And then Rafaela, who is still young but getting old from leaning out the window so much, gets locked indoors because her husband is afraid Rafaela will run away since she is too beautiful to look at” ( Cisneros # 79 ).
She achieves her aim in highlighting that the prohibitive laws which reduce people like her to mere sexual bodies is a psycho-social remnant of the colonial past. She addresses a number of audiences within the piece, including the human rights community, the governments of both her native Trinidad and Tobago and The Bahamas, and by extension all citizens of the Caribbean and wider world who have been disenfranchised by laws that diminish their humanity and highlight their perceived iniquity. The implication of her essay is clear: if not just any body can be a citizen, the democracy which we have set up is in need of some adjustment. It relates to us because it reminds us that for every time we deny any body rights, we have failed to live up to the principles on which are postcolonial societies are supposed to be
Human suffering anywhere concerns men and women everywhere”. There is so much bad form and enduring, shouting out for attention victims of yearning, of racism and political abuse in Chile, for occasion, or in the occasion journalists and artists, prisoners in such a large number of terrains administered by the left and by the
The Myth of the Latin Woman: I Just Met a Girl Named María is an essay by Judith Ortiz Cofer that addresses the impact of stereotyping on Latino women. Throughout the essay, Cofer relates her personal experiences with stereotypes to discuss how they have negatively affected her life and the lives of other Latinas. She also explains how these stereotypes originated and calls on her audience, the majority-white non-Latino population, to stop propagating the stereotypical portrayals of Latino women. In The Myth of the Latin Woman, Cofer speaks out about how stereotyping hinders the process of assimilating to a new culture by appealing to ethos through her personal experiences, using similes that show how stereotypes create isolation, and adopting
“The common denominator all Latinos have is that we want some respect. That 's what we 're all fighting for” - Cristina Saralegui. Judith Ortiz Cofer published the article, “The Myth of the Latin Woman,” where she expresses her anger towards stereotypes, inequality, and degradation of Latin Americans. Cofer explains the origins of these perceived views and proceeds to empower Latin American women to champion over them. Cofer establishes her credibility as a Latin American woman with personal anecdotes that emphasize her frustration of the unfair depiction of Latinos in society.
The Decolonial Imaginary, an undoubtedly challenging book that makes the reader question not only their knowledge of history and theory but also the way in which it has been told through the centuries. Emma Pérez, a Chicana historian with her bachelors, masters, and doctorate from the University of California, Los Angeles, put into perspective the ideas of Freud, Foucault, archeology and genealogy to lead the reader through the deconstruction of Chicana feminist historiography. Pérez then reconstruct history in a way that breaks the destructive cycles of patriarchy. She crosses many boarders as she takes nationalist history and traverses it into a Chicana Feminism, and by doing so she rewrites history from the perspective of a decolonial imaginary.
Love has always been a complicated emotion to experience, let alone study; however, Denise Brennan has captured the complexity of performing love in her book What’s Love Got to do With it?. What’s Love Got to do With it?, traces the evolution of Sosua, a small coastal Dominican town, struggling to resolve its traditional understandings of Dominican identity with its growing role in the transnational tourism economy. Europeans, particularly Germans, flocked to Sosua in the early 1990s in search of an “exotic”, and often erotic paradise (68). The influx both Dominican migrants and European immigrants as well as their associated cultures, goods, and ideas converged allowing Sosua to take on a transnational identity which Brennan describes and
Without the traditional community they once would have had in Puerto Rico, there was no intervention to stop child abuse. As a teenage girl, Candy went against her father’s dominate role by running away. It was not uncommon for such instance to occur Puerto Rico. The family faced no shame by a runaway daughter as long as she allowed her lover to have complete control. Usually a girl would have the aid of her community to bring her to a new male-dominate household and away from her father’s abuse (2003: 219).
A Homage to Feminism Feminism revolves around the notion that men and women are equal, an idea that is seldom accepted or embraced at the end of the twentieth century in Latin America. In the autobiographical novel, The House of the Spirits, Isabel Allende weaves a story about the lives of women through four generations during the revolution of 1970. The idea of male dominance is prominent throughout both the political and social arenas of Latino communities. However, Allende uses members of the Del Valle family to portray the theme of feminism evolving during this time. Isabel Allende’s The House of the Spirits, highlights the intertwined lives of two Latin American women, Clara and Alba, to parallel the feminist attitudes that associate with