Performing La Mestiza: Textual Representations of Lesbians of Color and the Negotiation of Identites (Literary Criticism and Cultural Theory)

This study explores the intersections of race/ethnic, gender, and queer identities in writings by contemporary American lesbians of color in order to show how this subject, who is at the interstices of these identity categories, is sometimes ignored, sometimes brutalized and is very rarely able to survive on her own terms by constructing her own identity acts of cultural revision.

The author places the lesbian of color in the context of current identity theories showing the ever-present blind spots within current theoretical paradigms. These blind spots are sometimes sexist, sometimes racist, sometimes heterosexist or sometimes all three. Then she reads a variety of writings by lesbians of color describing the possibilities that exist for these subjects in textual and social realities. The author shows the varied communities that threaten the existence of this subject as well as the limits that dictate the subject's ability to create her self. By bridging Judith Butler's "gender trouble" and Gloria Anzaldua's "new mestiza" she describes how lesbians of color can survive numerous sites of hostility by constructing a positive identity within her home community through revising cultural traditions and history. After considering the power of these acts of revision the author calls for the empowered performance of the mestiza state- the state of contradiction wherein the lesbian of color finds herself.

This book is the first to analyze creative and theoretical works by African American, Asian American, Latina, and Native American communities and writers through the lens of lesbian studies. Authors include recognized figures such as Audre Lorde, Ana Castillo, and Paula Gunn Allen as well as lesser known authors like Best Brant, Natashia Lopez, and Willyce Kim. It provides a corrective to Butler's empowering but white supremacist vision of performing identity, so that lesbians of color can claim their identities and remain tied to their won cultural traditions. Ultimately, the author asks for a reconsideration of the value of identity studies that articulate monolithic identities and whose analyses perpetuate what they seek to disrupt.