Overview

Contrasting works by queer Chicano writers against the legal landscape of sexuality and migration to interrogate the “lawful fiction” that denies queer migrants citizenship and community. Activists for immigrants and queer people under assault by US authorities focus overwhelmingly on protections presumed to be afforded by citizenship through narratives that have rarely had a place for queer immigrants, who have consistently faced special obstacles to legal entry and citizenship that only recently are being applied more widely. Queer in a Legal Sense studies literary works by gay Chicanx writers alongside instruments of law, showing through this juxtaposition how racialized queer people have been imagined as nonviable from the standpoint of citizenship. In stories by John Rechy, Arturo Islas, Rigoberto GonzÁlez, Michael Nava, and Jaime Cortez, JosÉ de la Garza Valenzuela finds what has gone missing in the migrant movement’s pursuit of gendered avenues to civic participation. Further, these works illuminate the production of fictions in canons of law, like those announced by the Florida legislature’s “Purple Pamphlet” and by the US Supreme Court in Boutilier v. INS and Bowers v. Hardwick. Queer in a Legal Sense argues that, through selective ommissions and inclusions, legal fictions place queerness outside the boundaries of citizenship and powerfully undermine queer representation in pro-migrant advocacy.

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9781477333525

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Reviews

Theoretically sophisticated, methodologically innovative, and ethically attuned, Queer in a Legal Sense is a rigorous, fascinating, timely--indeed urgent--critique of US citizenship and its ""lawful fictions"" through the lens of gay Chicano literature. Throughout the book, José de la Garza Valenzuela illustrates that gay Chicano fiction is uniquely positioned to expose the violence of US law and law enforcement against queers, the contradictory heteronormative demands of US citizenship, and the brutal ambiguities of US immigration law. Queer in a Legal Sense is a vital intervention in and a much-needed alternative history of contemporary debates about US citizenship.--Lisa Marie Cacho, University of Virginia, author of Complex Innocence: Defending Defiant Victims of Police Killings This is a book that many of us have waited decades for. José de la Garza Valenzuela assembles a gay Chicano literary canon and uses it to illuminate the impact of laws and legal decisions on the fates of immigrants, queer people, and people of color. Accessibly written and brilliantly argued, Queer in a Legal Sense makes a case for placing queer Chicano cultural production at the center of the American experience.--Michael Roy Hames García, University of Texas at Austin, author of Identity Complex: Making the Case for Multiplicity

Author Information

José A. de la Garza Valenzuela is an assistant professor in the Department of Latina/Latino Studies at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign.

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