Migratory Sexualities, Diasporic Histories, and Memory in Queer Cuban-American Cultural Production

Abstract

Interrogations of diasporic relations between place, subjectivity, and sexuality have transformed representational practices and paradigms of both Cuban and Cuban-American identity on multiple fronts. Through a consideration of two texts representing the Cuban diaspora-Achy Obejas's 1996 novel Memory Mambo and Carmelita Tropicana's performance piece “Milk of amnesia/Leche de amnesia”, first developed in 1994–I explore the centrality of sexuality in constructions of self, community, and nation. These works effectively ‘queer’ notions of immigrant belonging and Cuban diasporic consciousness, particularly in the sense of exploring the spatial imaginary of diaspora to expose and question the heteropatriarchal, and hence nationalist, underpinnings of more dominant models of diaspora. In their work, Obejas and Tropicana indicate the spatial dimensions of cultural memory and the imbrication of diasporic politics and sexualities. Attending to differences in genre, each work mines a crucial interplay between diasporic and sexual histories. In Tropicana's performance piece she uses a parodic sensibility and the broad humor enabled by the stage to engage, in a new register, with the politics of memory and the uses of place and sexuality, both in relation to Cuba and to the United States. Obejas works through and against the conventions of the contemporary novel (both immigrant and lesbian coming-of-age stories, in particular) to undo many of the assumptions regarding memory, sexuality, and cultural nostalgia as they are represented in her narrative. Both Obejas and Tropicana assert an imbrication of histories of colonialism, migration, and national attachment with experiences and practices of sexuality and gender in ways that underscore the importance of space and place in the constitution of collective memories.

Critical geographies and the uses of sexuality: deconstructing queer space

“…I highlight work that explicitly challenges the dominant disciplinary construction of queer space here. Other notable work in queer geographies that attends to sexualization as a racialized process include: Bacchetta (2002); Elder (1998); Knopp (1998); Jazeel (2005); Sugg (2003). 8.…”

Identities and Belonging: A Study of Somali Refugee and Asylum Seekers Living in the UK and Denmark

“…Pratt (2003/04), drawing on research with Filipino immigrants to Canada, argues that parents' experiences of dislocation make an impression on their children's self-identities. She employs Hirsch's (1997) notion of`postmemory'öthe experiences that young people`remember' only as the stories and images of past places/ times instilled in them by their parentsöto demonstrate how negative experiences or traumas can be passed down the generations (cf Sugg, 2003). However, the evidence of this research is that parents are anxious to protect their children from the burden of negative postmemories (cf Fresco, 1984).…”

“…Many of the Somali parents interviewed acknowledged their children's desire to experience Somalia for themselves and in recent years several families had made return visits. Other studies (cf Pratt, 2003/04;Sugg, 2003) suggest that such`return journeys' provide an important process through which migrants can reflect on their own identities and sense of belonging. Pratt (2003/04, page 55), summarising the experiences of Filipino-Canadian young people making a visit to the Philippines in which they recounted feeling`at home' and recovering their roots, describes the return journey as: a``journey to a space of belonging''.…”

Belonging among diasporic African communities in the UK: Plurilocal homes and simultaneity of place attachments

“…However, there is another side of the coin to the one that evokes a celebratory imagining of migrants full of postmodern potential (Smith & Guarnizo, 1998;Hardt & Negri, 2004) second generation than the first generation in this study, most probably due to the young immersion in the host country social milieu for a relatively longer period of time in their lives (and during formative years) alongside country of origin influences. Homeland visits can further Baldassar (2001) and Mason (2004) suggest that it is not only among first generation migrants that homeland visits are elevated to journeys of great significance through which identities and senses of belonging are refracted (see also, Pratt, 2003;Sugg, 2003). Homeland visits are of equal importan o exploring and/or fixing senses of belonging and identities.…”