Global Divas

by Martin F. Manalansan IV, Jack Halberstam, Lisa Lowe

Male homosexualityFilipinos, united statesFilipinosGay menEthnic identity

0.0

Open Library

About this book

A vivid ethnography of the global and transnational dimensions of gay identity as lived by Filipino immigrants in New York City, Global Divas challenges beliefs about the progressive development of a gay world and the eventual assimilation of all queer folks into gay modernity. Insisting that gay identity is not teleological but fraught with fissures, Martin Manalansan IV describes how Filipino gay immigrants, like many queers of color, are creating alternative paths to queer modernity and citizenship. He makes a compelling argument for the significance of diaspora and immigration as sites for investigating the complexities of gender, race, and sexuality. Manalansan locates diasporic, transnational, and global dimensions of gay and other queer identities within a framework of quotidian struggles ranging from everyday domesticity to public engagements with racialized and gendered images to life-threatening situations involving AIDS. He reveals the gritty, mundane, and often contradictory deeds and utterances of Filipino gay men as key elements of queer globalization and transnationalism. Through careful and sensitive analysis of these men’s lives and rituals, he demonstrates that transnational gay identity is not merely a consumable product or lifestyle, but rather a pivotal element in the multiple, shifting relationships that queer immigrants of color mobilize as they confront the tribulations of a changing world.

Themes & subjects

Male homosexualityFilipinos, united statesFilipinosGay menEthnic identityIdentity

Setting

PhilippinesNew York (State)New York

About the authors

Martin F. Manalansan IV

1960

Martin F. Manalansan IV is the Beverly & Richard Fink Professor in Liberal Arts and Professor of American Studies at the University of Minnesota, Twin Cities. He has taught at the University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign, University of the Philippines, New York University, New School University, Wesleyan University, and the City University of New York. As a cultural anthropologist, he is interested in the ethnographic study of the small, the fleeting, the contingent, and the "infra-ordinary." He conducts interdisciplinary research on queer theory, sexuality and gender, Asian Americans, Filipino global diaspora, affect and embodiment, food and culture, decolonial politics of social science…

Jack Halberstam

15 December 1961

Jack Halberstam, also known as Judith Halberstam, is Professor of American Studies and Ethnicity, Gender Studies, and Comparative Literature, as well as serving as the Director of The Center for Feminist Research at University of Southern California (USC). Halberstam was the Associate Professor in the Department of Literature at the University of California at San Diego before working at USC. He is a gender and queer theorist and author. Halberstam, who accepts masculine and feminine pronouns, as well as the name "Judith," with regard to his gender identity, focuses on the topic of tomboys and female masculinity for his writings. His 1998 Female Masculinity book discusses a common by-prod…

Lisa Lowe

1955-11-03

Lisa Lowe is Samuel Knight Professor of American Studies at Yale University, and an affiliate faculty in the programs in Ethnicity, Race, and Migration and Women's, Gender, and Sexuality Studies. Prior to Yale, she taught at the University of California, San Diego, and Tufts University. She began as a scholar of French and comparative literature, and since then her work has focused on the cultural politics of colonialism, immigration, and globalization. She is known especially for scholarship on French, British, and United States colonialisms, Asian migration and Asian American studies, race and liberalism, and comparative empires.