Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo

Description

Rachel Afi Quinn investigates how visual media portray Dominican women and how women represent themselves in their own creative endeavors in response to existing stereotypes. Delving into the dynamic realities and uniquely racialized gendered experiences of women in Santo Domingo, Quinn reveals the way racial ambiguity and color hierarchy work to shape experiences of identity and subjectivity in the Dominican Republic. She merges analyses of context and interviews with young Dominican women to offer rare insights into a Caribbean society in which the tourist industry and popular media reward, and rely upon, the ability of Dominican women to transform themselves to perform gender, race, and class. Engaging and astute, Being La Dominicana reveals the little-studied world of today's young Dominican women and what their personal stories and transnational experiences can tell us about the larger neoliberal world. Cover Title Copyright Contents Acknowledgments Introduction: Transnational Feminist Cultural Studies, Visual Culture, and the Ethnographic Project 1. Sites of Identity: Facebook, Murals, and Vernacular Images 2. Me Quedo con la Greña: Dominican Women’s Identities and Ambiguities 3 .Whiteness, Transformative Bodies, and the Queer Dominicanidad of Rita Indiana 4. A Thorn in Her Foot: The Discomfort of Racism and the Ethnographic Moment 5. The Camera Obscura: Teatro Colectivo Las Maleducadas’ Production of La Casa de Bernarda Alba 6. Feminist Rage and the Right to Life for Women in the Dominican Republic Notes Works Cited Index Back cover