Revolutionary Cuba does not recognize the liberal rights on which LGBTQ advocates in the United States rely. How then, has legal progress occurred for LGTBQ people in Cuba? This book traces the history of LGBTQ identity and law in Cuba and the US from the turn of the twentieth century through the legalization of same-sex marriage. It investigates material and discursive conditions during and after the Cold War and the under-recognized importance of legal consciousness. Applying comparative legal analysis, genealogy, critical social theories, and interviewing, the book produces an encounter between Cuba and the US that directs attention to the millions of constitutive run-ins that occur daily between the global and the local. Rich and insightful, it reveals how law and identity evolve under imperialism, anxious nationalisms, racial stratification, and economic hardship.

‘Libby Adler has written an exquisite comparative historical study of LGBTQ law and life in Cuba and the United States. Adler’s exposition of queer sexual identities, identifications, and relations as dynamically responsive to – rather than inertly determined by – law and political economy is an essential contribution to contemporary legal scholarship.’

Joe Fischel - Yale University

‘Adler’s sophisticated sociolegal take on theories of gender and sexuality finds voice here in the entanglements of national ideology and homosexual identity in Cuba and the United States. With her usual lucidity, Adler interprets gay stigmatization and emancipation in the two societies to illustrate her original approach to intersection of gender identities and law.’

David Kennedy - Harvard University

‘Keeping a critical US-grounded lens attentive to law, political economy, queer theory, and social reproduction, Libby Adler turns to Cuba with striking originality, offering a unique perspective. Governing the Terrain Called Beauty illuminates the contradictions of same-sex marriage reform and the forces shaping it, offering a deeply human, non-judgmental account that moves beyond reductive tropes about Cuba. Embracing an expansive view of law as formal regimes, norms shaped by external material conditions, internal ideologies, and lived discourses, Adler shows how governance operates through aesthetics and comparison to unsettle assumptions and open space for critical reflection.’

Fernanda G. Nicola - American University Washington College of Law

‘More than a genealogy, Adler crafts a self‑interrogating account that pushes us to reconsider how sexuality, identity, and political economy shape one another. Her rigorous case study of the intertwined histories of Cuba and the United States opens new possibilities for deepening our legal consciousness and imagining transformative paths forward.’

Aníbal Rosario-Lebrón - Rutgers Law School, Newark