Dr. Kristie Soares celebrates the release of her new book "Playful Protest:听The Political Work of Joy in Latinx Media"听with conversation, appetizers and dancing!
About the book...
Pleasure-based politics in Puerto Rican and Cuban pop culture
University of Illinois Press, 2023
Joy is a politicized form of pleasure that goes beyond gratification to challenge norms of gender, sexuality, race, and class. Kristie Soares focuses on the diasporic media of Puerto Rico and Cuba to examine how music, public activist demonstrations, social media, sitcoms, and other areas of culture resist the dominant stories told about Latinx joy. As she shows, Latinx creators compose versions of joy central to social and political struggle and at odds with colonialist and imperialist narratives that equate joy with political docility and a lack of intelligence. Soares builds her analysis 
around chapters that delve into听驳辞锄补苍诲辞听in salsa music, precise joy among the New Young Lords Party,听肠丑辞迟别辞听in the comedy听驴Que虂 Pasa U.S.A.?,听补锄耻虂肠补谤听in the life and death of Celia Cruz,听诲补濒别听as Pitbull鈥檚 signature affect, and Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez鈥檚 use of silliness to take political violence seriously.
Daring and original,听听examines how Latinx creators resist the idea that joy only exists outside politics and activist struggle.