Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities

Edited by Arturo J. Aldama and Frederick Luis Aldama

SERIES: Latinx Pop Culture

The University of Arizona Press

Latinx hypersexualized lovers or kingpin predators pulsate from our TVs, smartphones, and Hollywood movie screens. Tweets from the executive office brand Latinxs as bad-hombre hordes and marauding rapists and traffickers. A-list Anglo historical figures like Billy the Kid haunt us with their toxic masculinities. These are the themes creatively explored by the eighteen contributors in Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities.

Together they explore how legacies of colonization and capitalist exploitation and oppression have created toxic forms of masculinity that continue to suffocate our existence as Latinxs. And while the authors seek to identify all cultural phenomena that collectively create reductive, destructive, and toxic constructions of masculinity that traffic in misogyny and homophobia, they also uncover the many spaces—such as Xicanx-Indígena languages, resistant food cultures, music performances, and queer Latinx rodeo practices—where Latinx communities can and do exhale healing masculinities.

With unity of heart and mind, the creative and the scholarly, Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities opens wide its arms to all non-binary, decolonial masculinities today to grow a stronger, resilient, and more compassionate new generation of Latinxs tomorrow.

Contributors
Arturo J. Aldama
Frederick Luis Aldama
T. Jackie Cuevas
Gabriel S. Estrada
Wayne Freeman
Jonathan D. Gomez
Ellie D. Hernández
Alberto Ledesma
Jennie Luna
Sergio A. Macías
Laura Malaver
Paloma Martinez-Cruz
L. Pancho McFarland
William Orchard
Alejandra Benita Portillos
John-Michael Rivera
Francisco E. Robles
Lisa Sánchez González
Kristie Soares
Nicholas Villanueva Jr.

Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities bristles with original insights and illuminating takes on an impressive array of expressive culture. A refreshing and pathfinding collection that leaves behind exhausted considerations of Latinx masculinity, the essays collected here focus our attention on the ever-shifting terms of debate concerning racialized genders and sexualities.’—Richard T. Rodríguez, author of Next of Kin: The Family in Chicano/a Cultural Politics

‘Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities promises an important contribution to the still-nascent study of the construction of Latina/o/x masculinities, and one that is inclusive of different forms of gender and sexuality identifications, including transgender, making it a particularly timely and innovative contribution.’—Laura E. Pérez, author of Eros Ideologies: Writings on Art, Spirituality, and the Decolonial

Arturo J. Aldama is an associate professor and chair of Ethnic Studies at the University of Colorado, Boulder, and affiliate faculty in Gender and Women’s Studies.

Frederick Luis Aldama is University Distinguished Professor, Arts & Humanities Distinguished Professor of English, University Distinguished Scholar, and Alumni Distinguished Teacher at The Ohio State University.

Decolonizing Latinx Masculinities: An Introduction
Frederick Luis Aldama and Arturo J. Aldama
PART I. HYBRID FORMS
1. Billy the Kid’s Corpse and the Specter of Mexican Manhood
John-Michael Rivera
2. Trump’s Poetics of Caca: Shitty “Bad Hombres” and “Shithole” Latin American Countries
Sergio A. Macías
3. “Noizy Minorityz”: White Republicans Trapped in the Cypher
Wayne Freeman
4. Homage to an Undocumented Heartbreak
Alberto Ledesma
5. Urban AlterNative Masculinity: Men, Land, and Re-Indigenization in Black Chicago’s Food Autonomy Movement
Pancho McFarland
6. Learning with Norma Montoya: Scholarship as Accompaniment, Accountability, and the Advancement of a Conscientious and Caring Masculinity
Jonathan D. Gomez
PART II. TRANSMEDIAL DETOXIFICATIONS
7. Decolonizing Predatory Masculinities in Breaking Bad and Mosquita y Mari
Arturo J. Aldama
8. Fighting the Good Fight: Grappling with Queerness, Masculinities, and Violence in Contemporary Latinx Literature and Film
T. Jackie Cuevas
9. Latin Lovers, Chismosas, and Gendered Discourses of Power: The Role of the Subjective Narrator in Jane the Virgin
Kristie Soares
10. Fea, Firme y Formal: Decolonizing Latinx Female Masculinity
Ellie Hernández
11. Chicano Dracula: The Passions and Predations of Bela Lugosi, Gomez Addams, and Kid Congo Powers
Paloma Martinez-Cruz
PART III. TROUBLING STORYWORLDS: UNSETTLING MASCULINITIES
12. The Hyperpatriarchal Games: Machismo and Its Discontents in Contemporary Young-Adult Latinx Literature
Lisa Sánchez González
13. The Uncertain Harbor of Home: Fragments, Familia, and Failure in Manuel Muñoz’s “Bring Brang Brung”
William Orchard
14. Unsettling Monuments of Chicanx Masculinity in Estela Portillo Trambley’s “Rain of Scorpions”
Francisco E. Robles
PART IV. WHY THE LATIN-X MATTERS: FROM PERFORMANCE TO ACTIVISM
15. Trans*lating the Genderqueer -x Through Caxcan, Nahua, and Xicanx Indígena Knowledge
Jennie Luna and Gabriel S. Estrada
16. “Eres Cuir, or What?”: Latinx Disidentificatory Practices of Becoming
Laura Malaver
17. Decolonizing Heteronormativities and Patriarchy Within Dominant Immigrant Rights Discourse
Alejandra Benita Portillos
18. A Rodeo to Call Their Own: LGBTQ Vaqueros and the Gay Rodeo of the American West
Nicholas Villanueva Jr.
Contributors
Index

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