Abstract
Queer Brown Voices comes at a time when queer and/or brown voices are being continuously silenced from both academic and political spaces. In mid-June 2015, for instance, a series of news stories hit my various feeds, alerting me to a “heckler” who was “thrown out” of a White House press meeting on President Obama’s LGBTQ civil rights successes (the LGBTQ Pride Reception). This “heckler” turned out to be an undocumented trans Latina activist, Jennicet Gutierrez, who was promptly portrayed by the media, in the words of the late Sylvia Rivera—a trans Latina pioneer for LGBT rights—as “too brown, too trans, and too radical.” In many ways, this event is representative of the current climate toward queer brown people in the United States: from the silencing of undocumented, trans activists at a Supreme Court rally (by a mainstream LGBT rights organization), to the inhuman treatment of LGBTQ immigrants and detainees, and the rising number of homicides of trans women of color each year.
The need to historicize this moment, and to give voice to those silenced for so long, is great. Queer Brown Voices meets this challenge. In this anthology, editors note that they use “queer” as both shorthand for LGBT—as is done now so commonly in public and political discourses—and also as a challenge to both hetero- and homonormative frameworks, ideas, and histories. In the same way, “brown” is used both as shorthand for individuals often forgotten in the U.S. conversation of race (e.g., outside the black/white binary) and also as a challenge to the gay-equals-white perception within “gay” movements. Thus, within the pages of the anthology, readers will find the voices of diverse queer brown people; people who, through personal storytelling and oral historicizing of activism/organizing, invoke the social and the political. Cutting through personal experiences of individual and structural discrimination, they highlight the importance of “queer” “brown” strategic mobilization throughout history—a history that has long been forgotten, erased, and white-washed by the “LGBT” mainstream. This anthology is very much a radical reenvisioning of pride, meant to engage in all the ways in which activism is multilayered and people are resilient. It certainly fills a gap within the activist literature.
However, within its pages, readers will find that queer brown people have also long been advocating for justice in solidarity with feminists, women and people of color, and other politically oppressed people. Such as Luz Guerra, who recounts experiences of racism, sexism, and homophobia in her youth that led her to look up to working women, develop a quick wit and a smart mouth, and fight back using art, poetry, acting, and eventually activism. With humor and passion, she weaves her work with Austin Latina/o Lesbian and Gay Organization (ALLGO), New Bridges, and the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center together with tales of motherhood and reconciliation with her past; and the reader is now aware of a time—the 1970-1980s—in which feminist lesbianas were coming of age and engaging in decolonial liberty and sovereignty struggles, not necessarily with fear, but with great hope.
Readers will also learn the “lesser told histories” of the corporatization of social movements: how non-profits were coached, formally and informally, to imitate corporate models, and through the financial necessity of the “501(c)(3) status,” unable to directly involve themselves in political activities and potentially radical agendas (because of the focus on deliverables and outcomes and ties to groups that did not approve). For instance, Gloria A. Ramirez recounts the early days of building the Esperanza Peace and Justice Center. The story involves a fascinating array of characters, including a nun, that ends with four organizations sharing a building, rented for one dollar a year from priests and sharing empty space with Habitat for Humanity materials. As Esperanza grew, so did local opposition, and in addition to racist and homophobic attacks, the Center was often denied funding from the city because of its gay and lesbian art shows (although it would eventually win a lawsuit against the city for this treatment, winning back funds for two years).
Throughout, this anthology “serves as a reminder to ‘mainstream’ LGBT movements that there are other issues besides sexuality” (p. 15). Engaging in an intersectional queer of color critique, the authors take on both racial and sexual formations in the U.S. and the promise of a better future—“for LGBT Latinas/os initially, but in the long run, for all” (p. 17). Although editor Quesada points out that Queer Brown Voices “cannot claim that the entire job is done,” I find it is a major step toward disrupting and decolonizing a history that is still being written. Indeed, it invokes the same inspiration and magnitude as bell hooks’ Feminist Theory: Margin to Center did for feminist theory/history, and is an essential text for queer people, brown people, and all other allies and friends in academia and beyond.