This book presents a thorough and compelling sociolinguistic ethnography of queer Mexicans/Latinxs in the metropolitan area of Phoenix, Arizona in the US. The book draws on sociolinguistic questionnaires and interviews of thirty-five queer Mexicans/Latinxs of varying demographics. It investigates formations of identity and community, and it queers notions of bilingualism by foregrounding the lived experiences of the participants, whose language practices influence and are influenced by identities at the intersection of ethnicity and sexuality.
Ch. 1, ‘Introduction: Locating a queer Latinx Phoenix’, presents the participants, contextualizes the site of fieldwork, and lays the theoretical framework that permeates Cashman's work in the pursuit of a jotería sociolinguistics—a framework informed by sociocultural linguistics, anthropolitical linguistics, thick(er) intersectionalities, and jotería studies. Ch. 2, ‘Queering bilingualism’, troubles traditional notions of language maintenance and shift, which have marginalized queer people, by investigating queer Mexicans/Latinxs’ stances towards bilingualism and how ethnicity, sexuality, and speaker agency impact proficiency and language practices (e.g. how oppression within the family sphere may cause participants to distance themselves from and speak less Spanish). Ch. 3, ‘Representing selves and others in coming out stories’, analyzes the participants’ coming out narratives by focusing on reported speech/thought, expressions of affect, and displays of emotion; despite hardships and negatives consequences of coming out, participants tend to project an agentive self in their narratives, and represent coming out as a triumph over adversity. Ch. 4, ‘Resisting the imperative: Stories about non-disclosure’, discusses narratives of nondisclosure of sexual orientation, how the narrators represent and orient to their past selves, and how coming out may be viewed differently by Mexicans/Latinxs as they prioritize the maintenance of family ties without a feeling of shame or deceit, thus problematizing and challenging the imperative of coming out in mainstream American society; it identifies stories of nondisclosure as being closet stories (for those who are currently out), being entendidxs (stories where sexual orientation is understood despite a lack of verbal declaration), and ‘going in’ stories (where the narrators are confronted about their sexuality, but deny it). Ch. 5, ‘Susana, a translatina collage’, discusses coming out stories told by a trans* woman based on the characteristics of the genre as identified by Lal Zimman (2009), especially accounting for the role of migration/mobility as she moves from powerless positions to more agentive roles in her narratives (e.g. from syntactic object to subject position). Ch. 6, ‘Doing identity, making community’, explores participants’ views on identity and community through an analysis of ethnic labels and sexual identifications, how these constitute resources for imposing, claiming, or rejecting/resisting certain identities, and how a queer Mexican/Latinx community may be talked into being.
Holly Cashman's book is essential reading for those interested in a wide range of topics: bilingualism; studies on language, gender, and sexuality; Latin American studies; and scholarship on identity, migration, and intersectionality. Praise must also be given to the author's carefulness in using/describing labels, avoidance of essentializing generalizations about social life and identity, and her sensitivity in dismissing direct correlations between language practices/attitudes and simplistic unidimensional views of identity.
