Civil Rights, Media & the Law, Gay & Lesbian, Cultural, Gay Studies 

Winner of the Alan Bray Memorial Book Prize presented by the GL/Q Caucus of the Modern Language AssociationFinalist for the 2015 LGBT Studies Award presented by the Lambda Literary FoundationSexual Futures, Queer Gestures and Other Latina Longings proposesa theory of sexual politics that works in the interstices between radical queerdesires and the urgency of transforming public policy, between utopian longingsand everyday failures. Considering the ways in which bodily movement isassigned cultural meaning, Juana María Rodríguez takes the stereotypes of thehyperbolically gestural queer Latina femme body as a starting point from whichto discuss how gestures and forms of embodiment inform sexual pleasures andpractices in the social realm.Centeredon the sexuality of racialized queer female subjects, the book’s variedarchive—which includes burlesque border crossings, daddy play, pornography,sodomy laws, and sovereignty claims—seeks to bring to the fore alternativesexual practices and machinations that exist outside the sightlines ofmainstream cosmopolitan gay male culture. Situating articulations of sexualsubjectivity between the interpretive poles of law and performance, Rodríguezargues that forms of agency continually mediate among these various structuresof legibility—the rigid confines of the law and the imaginative possibilitiesof the performative. She reads the strategies of Puerto Rican activistsworking toward self-determination alongside sexual performances on stage, incommercial pornography, in multi-media installations, on the dance floor, andin the bedroom. Rodríguez examines not only how projections of racialized sexerupt onto various discursive mediums but also how the confluence of racial andgendered anxieties seeps into the gestures and utterances of sexual acts,kinship structures, and activist practices.Ultimately, Sexual Futures, Queer Gestures, and Other Latina Longingsreveals ­—in lyrical style and explicit detail­—how sex has been deployed incontemporary queer communities in order to radically reconceptualize sexual politics. - from Amzon