Reimagining US Colombianidades: Transnational subjectivities, cultural expressions, and political contestations

This book focuses our attention on yet another community that has been scantily represented in Latino/a/x studies scholarship. US Colombians are no longer content to be characterized as “the other Latinos,” and the editors of this special issue make the case that study of US Colombianidades enhances and productively troubles Latino/a/x studies. This engaging set of essays highlights the rich diversity of US Colombianidades as well as the group’s similarities and differences with other Latino/a/x groups. With its innovative cultural studies and social sciences perspectives and interpretive theories, this volume offers a deep dive into issues such as how racial, gender, sexual, and socioeconomic realities shape US Colombian experience; the representation of US Colombians in popular culture; interethnic relations between Colombians and other Latina/o/xs; the political participation of Colombians in US electoral politics; Colombian transnational understandings of identity; and much more. Iwant to thank the editors of this special issue—Lina Rincón, Johana Londoño, Jennifer Harford Vargas, and María Elena Cepeda—for curating a set of articles that will most certainly inspire Latino/a/x studies scholars to expand our notions of Latinidades and be attentive to the ways in which a focus on US Colombianidades complicates and enriches our field.

A note from the editor.- Reimagining US Colombianidades: Transnational subjectivities, cultural expressions, and political contestations.- Latina feminist moments of recognition: Contesting the boundaries of gendered US Colombianidad in Bomba Estéreo’s “Soy yo”.- Diasporic home: US Colombian belonging and becoming in Patricia Engel’s Vida.- Asserting difference: Racialized expressions of Colombianidades in Philadelphia.- Disaggregating the Latina/o/x “umbrella”: The political attitudes of US Colombians.- New York’s lonely streets: Constructions of soledad in Colombianx migrant experiences.- Concrete disavowal: Re-placing Colombian communities into the New York landscape before World War II.- ¿Y qué de Andrés? On the need for queer-centered asylum laws and histories.- Strategies of segregation: Race, residence, and the struggle for educational equality.- Pathways of desire: The sexual migration of Mexican gay men.- Undocumented storytellers: Narrating the immigrant rights movement.- Deported to death: How drug violence is changing migration on the US–Mexico border.- Ricanness: Enduring time in anticolonial performance.- Correction to: Listening to more than salsa: A letter of appreciation to Dr. Frances R. Aparicio.