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Winner of the MLA's Katherine Singer Kovacs Prize for an outstanding book published in English in the field of Latin American and Spanish literatures and culture (1999)

For Anglos, the pulsing beats of salsa, merengue, and bolero are a compelling expression of Latino/a culture, but few outsiders comprehend the music's implications in larger social terms. Frances R. Aparicio places this music in context by combining the approaches of musicology and sociology with literary, cultural, Latino, and women's studies. She offers a detailed genealogy of Afro-Caribbean music in Puerto Rico, comparing it to selected Puerto Rican literary texts, then looks both at how Latinos/as in the US have used salsa to reaffirm their cultural identities and how Anglos have eroticized and depoliticized it in their adaptations.

Aparicio's detailed examination of lyrics shows how these songs articulate issues of gender, desire, and conflict, and her interviews with Latinas/os reveal how they listen to salsa and the meanings they find in it. What results is a comprehensive view "that deploys both musical and literary texts as equally significant cultural voices in exploring larger questions about the power of discourse, gender relations, intercultural desire, race, ethnicity, and class."

Table of Contents

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  1. Cover
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  1. Listening to Salsa
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  1. Music / Culture
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  1. Title Page
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  1. Copyright
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  1. Dedication
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  1. Contents
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  1. List of Illustrations
  2. p. ix
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  1. Preface
  2. pp. xi-xxi
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  1. Part I. The Danza and the Plena: Racializing Women, Feminizing Music
  1. A Literary Prelude
  2. pp. 3-7
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  1. 1. A White Lady Called the Danza
  2. pp. 8-26
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  1. 2. A Sensual Mulatta Called the Plena
  2. pp. 27-44
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  1. 3. Desiring the Racial Other: Rosario Ferré’s Feminist Reconstructions of Danza and Plena
  2. pp. 45-61
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  1. Part II. The Plural Sites of Salsa
  1. A Postmodern Preface
  2. pp. 65-68
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  1. 4. Situating Salsa
  2. pp. 69-82
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  1. 5. Ideological Negotiations: Between Hegemony and Resistance
  2. pp. 83-103
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  1. 6. Cultural (Mis)Translations and Crossover Nightmares
  2. pp. 104-117
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  1. Part III. Dissonant Melodies: Singing Gender, Desire, and Conflict
  1. Theoretical Pretexts: Listening (as) Woman
  2. pp. 121-124
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  1. 7. Woman as Absence: Hetero(homo)sexual Desire in the Bolero
  2. pp. 125-141
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  1. 8. Patriarchal Synecdoches: Of Women’s Butts and Feminist Rebuttals
  2. pp. 142-153
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  1. 9. Singing the Gender Wars
  2. pp. 154-171
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  1. 10. Singing Female Subjectivities
  2. pp. 172-183
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  1. Part IV. Así Somos, Así Son: Rewriting Salsa
  2. p. 185
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  1. Listening to the Listeners: An Introduction
  2. pp. 187-190
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  1. 11. Así Son: Constructing Woman
  2. pp. 191-218
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  1. 12. Así Somos: Rewriting Patriarchy
  2. pp. 219-238
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  1. Afterword
  2. pp. 239-245
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  1. Notes
  2. pp. 247-280
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  1. Index of Songs and Recordings
  2. pp. 281-282
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  1. General Index
  2. pp. 283-290
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