Streetwalking

Anyone curious about how queer people in the Dominican Republic push back against a society shaped by Catholic tradition, Hispanic cultural norms and male dominance will find this study useful. Ana-Maurine Lara looks at how lesbian, gay, bisexual, trans and queer people build and use influence in that setting, and at the methods their community leaders adopt to win recognition, rights and a claim to their own identities.

The book draws on fieldwork conversations, interviews, and film and video material. Through these, activists explain their own approaches: streetwalking, confrontación, flipping the script, cuentos, and strategic universalisms. Lara grounds this work in two theoretical frameworks, María Lugones's account of streetwalker strategies and Audre Lorde's writing on silence and action.

The result rethinks where power sits and how it works, using the actual experiences of the Dominican LGBTQ community as its evidence.