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Susana Peña iOye Loca!: From the Mariel Boatlift to Gay Cuban Miami. Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 2013. ix + 224 pp. (Paper us$ 25.00)
iOyeLoca!makesanoutstandingcontribution tomigration studies,genderand sexuality studies, and Cuban and Caribbean studies. Susana Peña provides a rich account of the way a convergence of events can create a particular historical moment that transforms communities. Focusing on the events preceding and following the Mariel Boatlift of the early 1980s, which led to a mass migration of Cubans to Miami, she shines a bright light on the geopolitics that led to that migration, including the politics concerning gender and sexuality in both Cuba and the United States, particularly Miami. Peña credits the politics of the time for producing the arrival of a significant number of men claiming to be homosexual as well as those perceived as gay due to being effeminate or gender transgressive. Their migration provided a catalyst for the advancement of what would become a gay Cuban American culture in Miami. Along the way, Peña interrogates national and political discourses on masculinity and heteronormativity as well as the connotations of visibly transgressive bodies that defy state policies. By employing multiple vantage points in telling the story of this...