Queer Brown Voices: Personal Narratives of Latina/o LGBT Activism ed. by Uriel Quesada, Leticia Gomez, and Salvador Vidal-Ortiz (review)

Queer Brown Voices offers a collection of fourteen testimonios from Latina/o LGBT activists who participated in organizations from metropolitan cities in the United States, Puerto Rico, and Cuba. The book includes six personal essays and eight chapters based on oral history interviews, all heavily edited but keeping the activists' voices as complete as possible. The book begins with a preface by Leticia Gomez that informs readers about the need to document the historical narratives of LGBT Latina/o activists during the 1980s, and 1990s because of the lack of documentation of Latina/o activists and erasure of queer brown voices and bodies.

Queer Brown Voices is intended for LGBT Latinas/os with knowledge about the history of LGBT Latina/o activism. This includes students, scholars, and historians who seek to build upon their work and further explore the impact of Latina/o LGBT activism in the larger LGBT, Latina/o and LGBT Latina/o community. The accessibility of this book is admirable: it can be read in academia or outside of it. The book aims to put the spotlight on activists that have been erased from the national agenda, while showing that there is no single issue within the Latina/o LGBT movement because they do not have singular, one-sided lives. The representation in media and other outlets overall have not given enough recognition to the LGBT Latina/o activists that have been fighting for equal rights. LGBT Latina/o activists have not only been active regarding same-sex marriage, like the mainstream LGBT discourse, but instead they have focused on other intersectional issues that affect us regarding housing, education, and health care access, among other issues.

Along with giving visibility to LGBT Latina/o activists, Queer Brown Voices also aims to recognize the differences among the activists, and counter the homogeneity that often comes with knowledge of social movements. The authors do a good job in disrupting this homogeneity throughout the book by sharing different experiences of Latinidad. The stories narrated are telling of the different sociopolitical standpoints of the activists; and how those standpoints influenced them as they made a connection to the work they did. The complexity of everyone's narratives helps readers understand the many obstacles that LGBT Latina/o activists faced while living in different spaces, such as the impact of AIDS, the discrimination against brown bodies and heteronormativity in these spaces. The editors explore the complexity of the experiences with an intersectional lens and Latina/o, queer, and feminist theory. They use intersectionality not only to explore the multiplicity of identities but also to understand the identity crossings and structural issues that continue to oppress queer brown voices.

The stories include LGBT Latina/o activists who have experienced racism, sexism, and homophobia among other forms of oppression. Participants may be of Mexican descent, Puerto Rican or mixed race but can identify as other; therefore going against the normative beliefs in Latinidades discourse. The definition of queer Latinidad is contested and redefined with every narrative. As first or second generation, the participants showed great resilience in difficult moments. The desire to be culturally and politically involved in order to make different types of spaces for themselves and others is clear in the testimonios.

The use of testimonios as a methodology in this text works as a tool with reflective possibilities while also disrupting the Eurocentric epistemologies and perceptions of knowledge within academia; this is helpful to make the book accessible to nonacademics. Although each narrative is not representative of the larger community, some of the similar experiences have helped to connect activists nationally. Queer Brown Voices enters conversations around the political sphere of social movements, disrupting what is known as LGBT activism. The book expands on the corporatization, professionalization, and NGOization of the LGBT organizations within the social movement; this colonial process of...