Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo |
Being La Dominicana: Race and Identity in the Visual Culture of Santo Domingo
University of Illinois Press
August 2021
264 pages
6 x 9 in.
13 black & white photographs
Cloth ISBN: 978-0-252-04381-9
Paper ISBN: 978-0-252-08580-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-0-252-05271-2
Rachel Afi Quinn, Associate Professor of Comparative Cultural Studies and Women’s, Gender & Sexuality Studies
University of Houston, Houston, Texas
Dominican women being seen—and seeing themselves—in popular culture
Rachel Afi Quinn investigates the ways Dominican visual culture portrays Dominican women and how women represent themselves in their own creative endeavors in response to existing stereotypes. Delving into the dynamic realities and uniquely racialized gendered experiences of women in Santo Domingo, Quinn reveals how racial ambiguity and color hierarchy work to shape experiences of identity and subjectivity in the Dominican Republic. She merges analyses of context and interviews with young Dominican women to offer rare insights into a Caribbean society in which the tourist industry and popular media reward, and rely upon, the ability of Dominican women to transform themselves to perform gender, race, and class.
Engaging and astute, Being La Dominicana reveals the little-studied world of today’s young Dominican women and what their personal stories and transnational experiences can tell us about the larger neoliberal world.
Tags: Dominican Republic, Rachel Afi Quinn, Santo Domingo, University of Illinois Press