Reading Chican@ Like a Queer: The De-Mastery of Desire

Acknowledgments

Reading Chican@ Like a Queer has a rhizomatic formation. The metaphor of a plant’s subterranean roots—creeping this way and that, forking here and there, but always working to feed what is above ground—strikes me as the bestwaytoindexhowthisbookisrootedinamultiplicityofradicallydifferent spaces of intellectual exchange. With a Ph.D. in English I launched a career in Women’s Studies. Working on this project in an interdisciplinary—or, at the very least, transdisciplinary—Women’s Studies context and in conversation with other Cultural Studies fellow travelers has induced me to substantiate at a moment’s notice the instructive value and material importance of literature and literary analysis. The learning curve has been nothing if not steep, maybe even precipitous, but has wonderfully complicated my understandings of subject formation, knowledge production, power circulations, and desire’s traffic—all of which provide apertures through which the function of racialized sexuality in Chican@ representational politics can be gleaned. This book began as a dissertation project at the University of Texas (UT) at Austin under the codirection of Ann Cvetkovich and José E. Limón. Even though the dissertation phase of this project now seems so long ago, both Ann and José have continued to be crucial supporters of my work in more ways than they could possibly know. My committee members Lisa Moore, Emma M. Pérez, and Darieck Scott provided substantive input and rigorous feedback. The process of writing my dissertation was enriched and enlivened by regular conversations with progressive and insightful graduate students, including the members of Ann’s dissertation group: Paige Schilt, Jennifer Bean, Gina Seising, Jennifer Mason, and Alyssa Harad. Meanwhile, and without fail, la chicanada would meet with José for happy hour at the Hole in the Wall every Friday afternoon, where we extended our discussions on Chican@ Cultural Studies deep into the night. For those conversations I raise my glass especially to Sheila Contreras, Laura Padilla, Nick Evans, Rachel Jennings, John Michael Rivera, Vicente Lozano, Juan Alonso, Dana Maya, Ralph Ro- x ACKNOWLEDGMENTS driguez, Emmet Campos, Gilberto Rosas, Olga Herrera, Patricia Perea, Jennifer Najera, and, of course, José. Finally, I cannot think of my time at Texas without thinking with deep respect of Barbara Harlow, whose transnational work on resistance literature has remained a major influence. (If this book is free of split infinitives, I must add, it is also thanks to Barbara!) An earlier version of Chapter 1 was published as “Cherríe Moraga’s Going Brown: ‘Reading Like a Queer’” in GLQ 11.2 (2005): 237–264. An earlier version of Chapter 3 was published as “Aztec Queens and Gypsy Kings: Reading Ana Castillo’s Eroticized Mestizaje” in Critical Essays on Chicano Studies, edited by Ramón Espejo et al. (Bern: Peter Lang, 2007), 221–232. I thank the editors and anonymous readers for their constructive feedback on these essays. And I am most appreciative of the anonymous readers of this book and of Theresa May, who has been an incredibly supportive editor. For indispensable financial support, I would like to thank the Department of Chicana and Chicano Studies at the University of California, Santa Barbara , for a 2000–2001 Chicana Studies Dissertation Fellowship; the Latina/ Latino Studies Program at the University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign for a 2004–2005 postdoctoral fellowship; and the University of Arizona for a 2004–2005 Research Grant and a 2005 Junior Sabbatical. In ways that I could never have anticipated, Reading Chican@ Like a Queer came to a close exactly where it began, at UT-Austin. For my spring 2008 residency fellowship with UT’s Center for Mexican American Studies, I am incredibly grateful to Richard R. Flores, associate dean for academic affairs, and, again, José E. Limón. I was warmly welcomed back to Austin by José and Richard, together with Lisa Moore, Ann Cvetkovich, Neville Hoad, Barbara Harlow, Deborah Paredez, Kimberly Alidio, Domino Pérez, and John M. González. I must also thank the staff of the Center for Mexican American Studies: Dolores García, Luis Guevara, and Johannah Hochhalter. The gratitude I wish to express to my colleagues at Arizona is not only de rigueur. The generous and unwavering mentorship of Monique Wittig (Theo) and Elizabeth Lapovsky Kennedy has been especially crucial. Theo died just a year and a half after I met her, but in that short time she became an extraordinary friend. I am just as grateful for that as I am for the fierce politics and outspokenness with which she lit up each...