Books by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
¿Se desea la abolición del pato, o es el pato mismo el que quiere abolirse? En el libro de Larry ... more ¿Se desea la abolición del pato, o es el pato mismo el que quiere abolirse? En el libro de Larry La Fountain-Stokes, todo el arsenal lingüístico, erótico, pop, filosófico, quiere escenificar el juego entre la escritura y la voz, la esencia y el simulacro. Es un teatro lírico de muñecas que incluye el relajo, la reivindicación y la rabia, escenas de instrucción para un público que está en todas partes y en ninguna. Son fragmentos de una cotidianeidad que remite torcidamente a Puerto Rico: ese lugar-pato, esa piscina insular con sus límites tan definidos por la geografía, abolidos por el pato que nada en ella. Al igual que Pedro Lemebel, La Fountain-Stokes no escatima recursos a la hora de nombrar el abecedario de una condición fantasma, y como Manuel Ramos Otero, opta en ocasiones por la veta más experimental para volar hasta el centro de la patería y convertirla en carnaval. —José Quiroga
Volume 3, Enciclopedia Deiknumena. Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, author. Dave Buchen, editor and i... more Volume 3, Enciclopedia Deiknumena. Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, author. Dave Buchen, editor and illustrator. San Juan, PR, 2016. (Illustrated artist edition with paper cut out dolls/toy theatre.)
A vocabulary of Latina/o studies. Keywords for Latina/o Studies is a generative text that enhance... more A vocabulary of Latina/o studies. Keywords for Latina/o Studies is a generative text that enhances the ongoing dialogue within a rapidly growing and changing field. The keywords included in this collection represent established and emergent terms, categories, and concepts that undergird Latina/o studies; they delineate the shifting contours of a field best thought of as an intellectual imaginary and experiential project of social and cultural identities within the U.S. academy. Bringing together sixty-three essays, from humanists, historians, anthropologists, sociologists, among others, each focused on a single term, the volume reveals the broad range of the field while also illuminating the tensions and contestations surrounding issues of language, politics, and histories of colonization, specific to this area of study. From "borderlands" to " migration," from "citizenship" to "mestizaje," this accessible volume will be informative for those who are new to Latina/o studies, providing them with a mapping of the current debates and a trajectory of the development of the field, as well as being a valuable resource for scholars to expand their knowledge and critical engagement with the dynamic transformations in the field.
"Showcasing an impressive breadth of concepts and theories, Keywords for Latina/o Studies is like no other book out there. Including accessible essays from contributors of unquestionable expertise and a solid engagement with the many delineations of the field, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars alike." —Isabel Molina-Guzmán, author of Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media
Queer Ricans is a study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Puerto Rican migration from a ... more Queer Ricans is a study of lesbian, gay, bisexual, and transgender Puerto Rican migration from a cultural studies perspective. Includes discussions of the lives and cultural productions (literature, film, cartoons, dance, theater) of Luis Rafael Sánchez, Manuel Ramos Otero, Luz María Umpierre, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Rose Troche, Erika López, Arthur Avilés, and Elizabeth Marrero, and how factors such as place of birth, age, sex, gender, race, ethnicity, class, and physical location affect Puerto Rican queer immigrant experience in the United States.
Translocas focuses on drag and transgender performance and activism in Puerto Rico and its diaspo... more Translocas focuses on drag and transgender performance and activism in Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Arguing for its political potential, Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes explores the social and cultural disruptions caused by Latin American and Latinx “locas” (effeminate men, drag queens, transgender performers, and unruly women) and the various forms of violence that queer individuals in Puerto Rico and the U.S. are subjected to. This interdisciplinary, auto-ethnographic, queer-of-color performance studies book explores the lives and work of contemporary performers and activists including Sylvia Rivera, Nina Flowers, Freddie Mercado, Javier Cardona, Jorge Merced, Erika López, Holly Woodlawn, Monica Beverly Hillz, Lady Catiria, and Barbra Herr; television programs such as RuPaul’s Drag Race; films such as Paris Is Burning, The Salt Mines, and Mala Mala; and literary works by authors such as Mayra Santos- Febres and Manuel Ramos Otero. Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, a drag performer himself, demonstrates how each destabilizes (and sometimes reifies) dominant notions of gender and sexuality through drag and their embodied transgender expression. These performances provide a means to explore and critique issues of race, class, poverty, national identity, and migratory displacement; and at times posit a relationship between audiences and performers that has a ritual-like, communal dimension. La Fountain-Stokes also analyzes the murders of Jorge Steven López Mercado and Kevin Fret in Puerto Rico, and invites readers to challenge, question, and expand their knowledge about queer life, drag, trans performance, and Puerto Rican identity in the Caribbean and the diaspora. He also pays careful attention to transgender experience, highlighting how trans activists and performers mold their bodies, promote social change, and create community in a context that oscillates between glamour and abjection.
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Michigan.
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Hardcover 978-0-472-07427-3 | $75
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These 14 short stories represent a Latin/o American poetic journey, a sensory pilgrimage through ... more These 14 short stories represent a Latin/o American poetic journey, a sensory pilgrimage through the pains and pleasures of diasporic, cosmopolitan gay and lesbian Puerto Rican identities in a postmodern, ever-shifting world. The tales touch on urban experiences throughout the Americas, at times incorporating elements of science fiction, vampires, detectives, and fantasy, but mostly focusing on the difficulties of mad, passionate love and its inevitable demise. Oscillating between humor and sadness, the stories are meant for readers who are not afraid of controversial ideas or taboo topics like sadomasochism, transvestism, prostitution, and pornography. Experimental and metaliterary, with intertextual allusions to the work of other gay writers such as Manuel Ramos Otero, Manuel Puig, and David Wojnarowicz, Uñas pintadas de azul/Blue Fingernails is an important contribution to queer Latino/a and Puerto Rican letters.
Papers by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
CENTRO: Journal of the Center for Puerto Rican Studies, 1999
Beatriz Llenín Figueroa, ed., Actas del 5to. Coloquio ¿Del otro la’o?: Perspectivas sobre sexualidades queer, 2015
Este texto es una meditación sobre Abolición del pato (2004) como respuesta performática a los su... more Este texto es una meditación sobre Abolición del pato (2004) como respuesta performática a los supuestos homofóbicos (o patofóbicos) de la modernidad y posmodernidad coloniales puertorriqueñas. Dicho performance presenta un personaje central, la doctora Lola Lolamento Mentosán de San Germán, acompañada por dos muñecas: la ñusta Isabel Chimpu Ocllo y la doctora Rigoberta Quetzal. La pieza es un juego gozoso y delirante, lleno de lenguaje popular, referentes históricos, intimidades escandalosas y crítica políticocultural. Estrenada durante la Primera Muestra de Arte Experimental de Casa Cruz de la Luna en San Germán, la Editorial Terranova la publicó como narrativa en 2013. Mi análisis se enfoca en los temas de la homofobia, el racismo, el arte experimental y el performance
como estrategias de autoetnografía, ritual colectivo y concientización social.
Revista Re-d: arte, cultura visual y género , 2009
Clepsydra. Revista de Estudios de Género y Teoría Feminista, 2021
Puerto Rican trans experience has been documented in different ways in the speeches,interviews, a... more Puerto Rican trans experience has been documented in different ways in the speeches,interviews, and publications of the activist Sylvia Rivera, the artist Holly Woodlawn, thehairstylist and activist Soraya (Barbara Santiago Solla), and the artist and university professorLuis Felipe Diaz, also known as Lizza Fernanda. The scarcity of traditional publications inthe genre of Puerto Rican trans autobiography invites a conceptual expansion, includingtheorizations on «testimonio» in Latin America and alternate modalities of publication suchas self-publishing and the use of online blogs. The particularities of the colonial situation inPuerto Rico and Puerto Ricans’ experiences of racialization in the United States requiresa careful reading, paying attention to the racial, ethnic, economic, and social dimensionsof trans Puerto Rican lives.
Pontos de Interrogação – Revista de Crítica Cultural, 2023
The exploration of LGBTQIA+ themes in commercial theater in Puerto Rico over the last thirty year... more The exploration of LGBTQIA+ themes in commercial theater in Puerto Rico over the last thirty years is strongly marked by adaptations and translations of foreign plays (principally from the United States and Europe) and by the influence of television. Is this a problem? Does it foster the creation of awareness about LGBTQIA+ experience and community, or does it propagate stereotypes? Why do audiences enjoy these plays so much? In this article I analyze Puerto Rican productions of La Cage aux Folles by Jean Poiret and The Boys in the Band by Mart Crowley, and of original plays by Héctor Méndez, Alexis Sebastián Méndez, and Johnny Ray under the optic of scenic populism, a modality that appeals to the popular and to a social consensus that can mark ruptures but that simultaneously does not transform society in a radical way. I also explore the role of key figures such as Juan González-Bonilla, arguing that translations and adaptations can be an interesting but also limited space, and that Puerto Rican television is an extremely complex space full of contradictions regarding LGBTQIA+ matters.
Claridad, 2008
La publicación de Los otros cuerpos: antología de temática gay, lésbica y queer desde Puerto Rico... more La publicación de Los otros cuerpos: antología de temática gay, lésbica y queer desde Puerto Rico y su diáspora a finales de 2007 coincidió con la aparición de otros textos que también intentan articular y dar coherencia al campo intelectual de los estudios puertorriqueños queer, incluyendo un número especial de la revista CENTRO Journal (2007); el libro de Arnaldo Cruz-Malavé, Queer Latino Testimonio, Keith Haring, and Juanito Xtravaganza: Hard Tails (también del 2007); y las actas del Primer Coloquio Nacional ¿Del otro la’o? (2008).
Debate Feminista, Apr 2004
Revista Iberoamericana, Jul 2005
Representación y fronteras: el performance en los límites del género, 2009
Gay Latino Studies: A Critical Reader, 2011
An antiracist critique of Douglas Crimp’s essay “Mario Montez, for Shame,” first published in a v... more An antiracist critique of Douglas Crimp’s essay “Mario Montez, for Shame,” first published in a volume dedicated to Eve Kosofsky Sedgwick in 2002.
Critical Terms in Caribbean and Latin American Thought: Historical and Institutional Trajectories, 2016
Actas del VI Coloquio ¿Del otro la’o?: Perspectivas sobre sexualidades queer, 1-3 March 2016, Univ. of Puerto Rico, Mayagüez. , 2017
Puerto Rican drag queens and transgender women have played a central role in American avant-garde... more Puerto Rican drag queens and transgender women have played a central role in American avant-garde cinema and performance, LGBT activism, and contemporary mass media entertainment. In this essay, I discuss Mario Montez’s pioneering negotiation of shame and sinverguëncería in Andy Warhol’s Screen Test #2 (1965), Holly Woodlawn’s engagement with poverty and welfare in Warhol and Paul Morissey’s Trash (1970), and contemporary re-articulations of politics and identity in Antonio Santini and Dan Sickles’ documentary Mala Mala (2014). I frame these in relation to other contributions such as those of Stonewall veteran Sylvia Rivera (represented cinematographically in a diversity of films) and to the Puerto Rican presence on the first seven seasons of RuPaul’s Drag Race (2009-2015). I analyze these interventions as instantiations of translocas, which is to say, vernacular transgender identities and practices that negotiate diaspora.
Boletín del Archivo Nacional de Teatro y Cine del Ateneo Puertorriqueño, Jan 2009
Journal of Latin American Cultural Studies, 2023
Before the global ascent of reggaetón, there was rap, and before Ivy Queen, Glory, Natti Natasha,... more Before the global ascent of reggaetón, there was rap, and before Ivy Queen, Glory, Natti Natasha, Cardi B, Villano Antillano, and Young Miko, there was Lisa M. This essay is an analysis of Lisa M’s musical career in the context of early 1990s debates about women, rap, and society in Puerto Rico, taking advantage of the increased focus on gender and on Puerto Rican women singers demonstrated by works ranging from Frances R. Aparicio’s Listening to Salsa: Gender, Latin Popular Music, and Puerto Rican Cultures to Licia Fiol-Matta’s The Great Woman Singer: Gender and Voice in Puerto Rican Music. I analyse Lisa M’s early musical production, particularly songs from her 1992 album Ahora vengo alborotá, and articles and letters to the editor from 1992 and 1993 in El Nuevo Día and Vea to document popular debates about rap and gender in Puerto Rico. I conclude with some reflections about Lisa M’s coming out of the closet in 2010 and her musical reappearance in 2018.
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Books by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
"Showcasing an impressive breadth of concepts and theories, Keywords for Latina/o Studies is like no other book out there. Including accessible essays from contributors of unquestionable expertise and a solid engagement with the many delineations of the field, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars alike." —Isabel Molina-Guzmán, author of Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Michigan.
Save 30% at press.umich.edu
with promotion code
UMS21
Paperback 978-0-472-05427-5 | $29.95
Hardcover 978-0-472-07427-3 | $75
Also available as an ebook.
Papers by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes
como estrategias de autoetnografía, ritual colectivo y concientización social.
"Showcasing an impressive breadth of concepts and theories, Keywords for Latina/o Studies is like no other book out there. Including accessible essays from contributors of unquestionable expertise and a solid engagement with the many delineations of the field, this book is an essential resource for students and scholars alike." —Isabel Molina-Guzmán, author of Dangerous Curves: Latina Bodies in the Media
Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes is Professor of American Culture, Romance Languages and Literatures, and Women’s and Gender Studies, University of Michigan.
Save 30% at press.umich.edu
with promotion code
UMS21
Paperback 978-0-472-05427-5 | $29.95
Hardcover 978-0-472-07427-3 | $75
Also available as an ebook.
como estrategias de autoetnografía, ritual colectivo y concientización social.
the Cuban-Puerto Rican performer Marga Gomez, the performer and activist Ignacio Rivera, the performer Elizabeth Marrero, and the filmmaker and TV director Rose Troche have also engaged on issues of diasporic Puerto Rican women's queer sexualities in their work. Other non-Puerto Rican women include the Cuban-American performance artist Carmelita Tropicana (Alina Troyano) and her sister, filmmaker Ela
Troyano. In this article, I will focus on works by Romo-Carmona (1952-), Obejas (1956-), and Braschi (1953-) and make some comparisons to Astor del Valle (1963-), Lopez (1967-), Negron-Muntaner (1966-), and Troche (1964-). While the first three share a similarity in age, they do not share a common vision or approach; the same applies to the second group. I will discuss the nature of their representations and the function that Puerto Rican lesbianism serves in their texts and will employ critical terms developed by Umpierre (1947-).