Thursday, December 01, 2005

all i need are books and food

Just to prove that everything in my life is not overwhelmingly crappy, I thought I'd post about an excellent book I read last week :-) Queer Latinidad: Identity Practices, Discursive Spaces by Juana Maria Rodriguez is about how the spaces that people exist in have an impact on their identity, shown through three different examples. The first is activism, illustrated through a chapter on a San Francisco queer Latina/o organization dedicated to fighting HIV/AIDS spread, Proyecto ContraSIDA por Vida (which incidentally has a truly fabulous mission statement but who I can't seem to find a link to). The second is the courtroom, through the court documents of a landmark case of a Brazilian gay man who was seeking a visa based on the fact that he would be physically threatened based on his sexuality in his native country. The third was based in the world of internet chatrooms and the politics of cybersex, using the author as the main subject (!). It was all engaging, and each section had some really awesome ideas. I especially liked the internet chapter, which raised so many cool issues of gender and identity and even language (Latin@ as a genderless internet handle, specifically) that I was just blown away. Definitely recommended.
On a random note, I just remembered that I meant to post this Halloween weekend. We saw a bunch of Loyola students on a train, and one of them was dressed as a box of Franzia wine (big box with a marker picture of a glass of wine and a soap dispenser pump stuck in approximately where her crotch would be). I overheard her say "Well, I went to the costume store and I was like, 'Well, I can be a slut or a slut' so I thought 'Box!'"
Also, it's my birthday tomorrow! We're going out for Ethiopian food on Saturday (my night off) so that can't be a bad thing.

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