Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes

My main research interests are American studies, queer/LGBT Hispanic Caribbean (Cuban, Dominican, Puerto Rican) studies, and U.S. Latina/o/x and Latin American literary, cultural, and performance studies. In my first book, Queer Ricans: Cultures and Sexualities in the Diaspora (University of Minnesota Press, 2009), I analyzed portrayals of migration, sexual diversity, and gender nonconformity in Puerto Rican cultural productions (such as cartoons, dance theater, film, literature, and performance art) both on the island and in the United States, focusing on the lives and work of artists such as Luis Rafael Sánchez, Manuel Ramos Otero, Luz María Umpierre, Frances Negrón-Muntaner, Rose Troche, Erika Lopez, Arthur Aviles, and Elizabeth Marrero.

In my more recent book, Translocas: The Politics of Puerto Rican Drag and Trans Performance (University of Michigan Press, 2021), I focus on drag and transgender performance and activism in Puerto Rico and its diaspora. Arguing for its political potential, I explore the social and cultural disruptions caused by Latin American and Latinx “locas” (effeminate men, drag queens, transgender performers, and unruly women) and the various forms of violence to which queer individuals in Puerto Rico and the U.S. are subjected. I highlight contemporary performers and activists including Sylvia Rivera, Nina Flowers, Freddie Mercado, Javier Cardona, Jorge Merced, Erika Lopez, Holly Woodlawn, Monica Beverly Hillz, Lady Catiria, and Barbra Herr (Barbara Hernández); television programs such as RuPaul’s Drag Race; films such as Paris Is Burning, The Salt Mines, and Mala Mala; and literary works by authors such as Mayra Santos-Febres and Manuel Ramos Otero. I show how each destabilizes (and sometimes reifies) dominant notions of gender and sexuality through drag and their embodied transgender expression, and explore and critique issues of race, class, poverty, national identity, and migratory displacement, also analyzing how they posit a relationship between audiences and performers that has a ritual-like, communal dimension. The book discusses the murders of Jorge Steven López Mercado and Kevin Fret in Puerto Rico, and invites readers to challenge, question, and expand their knowledge about queer life, drag, trans performance, and Puerto Rican identity in the Caribbean and the diaspora. I pay careful attention to transgender experience, highlighting how trans activists and performers mold their bodies, promote social change, and create community in a context that oscillates between glamour and abjection.

Currently, I am working on a book on contemporary performance in Puerto Rico and am writing on artists such as Aravind Enrique Adyanthaya, Awilda Rodríguez Lora ("La Performera"), Gisela Rosario (Macha Colón), Eduardo Alegría, and Mickey Negrón. I have also continued to publish on additional transloca performers such as Walter Mercado and Fausto Fernós.

I have served on the board of directors of the CUNY Center for Lesbian and Gay Studies (www.clags.org), on the Modern Language Association's Committee on the Literatures of People of Color of the United States and Canada (www.mla.org), and on the Executive Committee of the MLA's Puerto Rican Literature and Culture Discussion Group (2001-05). I was the chair of the Lesbian and Gay Studies Section (now known as the Sexualities Studies Section) of the Latin American Studies Association (2003-04). I am also a member of the Puerto Rican Studies Association (https://www.ricanstudies.com/), the American Studies Association, and the Caribbean Studies Association.