Playful Protest

This book looks at the social and political work of joy in Latinx media. It defines joy as a politicized form of pleasure, one that not only produces gratification but also unsettles social norms of gender, sexuality, race, and class. The book investigates how joy is operationalized to this end in Puerto Rican and Cuban diasporic media. It contends that when cultural producers perform joy in diasporic Puerto Rican and Cuban media texts—ranging from music, to public activist demonstrations, to sitcoms—they resist the dominant stories told about Latinx joy. Centuries of colonialist and imperialist narratives suggest that joy in Latinx people indicates their lack of intelligence and their docility as political subjects. In response, these creators put forth a version of joy that is central to Latinx social and political struggle, even if it may be incomplete at times. The book provides a culturally specific vocabulary for joy in the Puerto Rican and Cuban diasporic contexts. The types of joy studied are—in chapter order—gozando (loosely, enjoying oneself), “precise” joy, choteo (“kidding” or “playing around with”), azúcar (literally, sugar), dale (loosely, going for it), and silliness. In defining the political to include joy, this book argues that we resist the logics of capitalism and colonialism that assume joy to be outside the purview of activist struggle.