Read and Discuss Susana Pena’s “Pajaration and Transculturation: Language and Meaning in Miami’s Cuban American Gay Worlds.” Susana Pena’s work can be challenging–she is drawing on the anthropological notions that sexuality and its forms are culturally constructed, and in this article, she is considering its emergence in the global city of Miami amongst Cuban Americans. She tells us on page 234 that “because sex and gender are organized differently in Latin America than in the United States, U.S. English language categories cannot be simply translated to understand Latin American cultural categories and lived experience.”
As you discuss in the brief lecture, it’s important to figure out what the systems of meaning are, or the metaphors of sexual identity are, especially the idea of sexual object choice (US) versus sexual aim (in the Latin American system).
On page 237, she gives an overview of three practices of where these US and Latin American systems converge. For your discussion post, focus on these three linguistic examples:
1) What happens in Miguel’s narrative? How is Juan’s narrative different than Miguel’s? (pages 237-240)
2) What is significant about the use of perra? How does Juan use mariquita, and how does he use “cantar ‘La Bayamesa’” when Susana asks about “coming out?” Finally, what does Manuel tell us about being a second-generation Cuban American gay man? (pages 240-243)
3) Discuss pájaration as a bilingual linguistic innovation—tell the context of Mariloly, what it meant, and what the audience response was and why. (pages 243-245)
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