She is Cuba: a genealogy of the mulata body

241 Pages·2016·12.584 MB·English

by  Melissa Blanco Borelli

She Is Cuba

She Is Cuba
A Genealogy of the Mulata Body
Melissa Blanco Borelli
1
1
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Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data
Blanco Borelli, Melissa.
She is Cuba : a genealogy of the mulata body / Melissa Blanco Borelli.
pages cm
Includes bibliographical references and index.
ISBN 978–0–19–996816–9 (cloth : alk. paper) — ISBN 978–0–19–996817–6 (pbk. : alk. paper)
1. Racially mixed people—Cuba—History. 2. Women—Cuba—History.
3. Stereotypes (Social psychology)—Cuba—History. I. Title.
HT1523.B54 2015
305.80097291—dc23
2015008909
9 8 7 6 5 4 3 2 1
Printed in the United States of America
on acid-free paper
Para Elba y Carmen, Para Carmen y María, el pasado
Para Teresita y Ramoncito, el presente
Para Sebastian y Sofia, el futuro
For my grandmothers and great-grandmothers, the past
For my parents, the present
For my nephew and niece, the future
Ellas: ¿quiénes serán? ¿O soy yo misma?
¿Quiénes son estas que se parecen tanto a mí,
no sólo por los colores de sus cuerpos
sino por ese humo devastador que exhala nuestra piel de res marcada
por un extraño fuego que no cesa?
Who are they, these women? Or are they me?
Who are they, who look so much like me
not only in the color of their bodies
but in the devastating smoke
that rises from our animal hides, branded
by a strange, unceasing fire?
—excerpt from Nancy Morejón, “Persona” (2000),
translated by David Frye
CONTENTS
Acknowledgments  ix
Prologue: Entre Familia(s), Entre Comillas  1
Introduction  5
1. Historicizing Hip(g)nosis  29
Interlude 1: Telling Stories/Echando Cuentos  50
2. Hip(g)nosis at Work: Rumors, Social Dance, and Cuba’s Academias
de Baile  61
Interlude 2: A Marriage Proposal  106
3. Hip(g)nosis as Pleasure: The Mulata on Film  111
Interlude 3: Lost Baggage  161
4. Hip(g)nosis as Brand: Despelote, Tourism, and Mulata
Citizenship  167
Conclusion, or Rear Endings  187
Notes  191
Works Consulted  205
Index  219

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS
If it were not for the people I am about to thank, this book might still be in
fragments, spread out among Dropbox, box, Google Drive, or some other
virtual storage site. Virtuality seems less frightening a space to store ideas,
feelings, and stories. On the page they glare back, asking for certainty, beg-
ging for one more rewrite. Yet, from virtuality I come back to the material
reality of my book and the immaterial sentiments that feel overwhelmingly
real as I write this section.
This project began as a doctoral thesis many years ago at the University
of California, Riverside. My thesis adviser, Anna Beatrice Scott, helped me
summon many of these ideas. Thank you, Anna, for encouraging me to let
my hips loose, to think broadly and differently, and to move along with my
writing. My professors at Riverside and UCLA consistently provoked and
inspired: Susan Leigh Foster, Marta Savigliano, Jacqueline Shea Murphy,
Alicia Arrizón, Linda Tomko and Jenny Sharpe. Alicia Arrizón and Deb
Vargas published excerpts from c hapter 3 in their special edition of Women
and Performance. I think it was my first academic publication, and it went
on to receive Honorable Mention for the Gertrude Lippincott Award at the
Society of Dance History Scholars’ June 2009 conference. I thank them
for being early supporters of my work. Sections of chapter 3 and the intro-
duction were originally published as “Y ahora qué vas a hacer, mulata?:
Hip choreographies in the Mexican cabaretera film Mulata (1954)” Women
and Performance: A Journal of Feminist Theory (2008) 18:3. Chapter 1 first
appeared in a shorter form as “Hip Work: Undoing the Tragic Mulata” in
Thomas F. DeFrantz and Anita Gonzalez’s edited collection Black Performance
Theory (Duke University Press, 2014). Nadine George Graves and Anthea
Kraut invited me to do a keynote address at the joint ASTR/CORD 2010
conference. There, I presented what eventually became c hapter 2. I am
grateful for the opportunity they provided. Marta Savigliano came up to me
after my talk, and she calmly asked, “Melissa, what if you can’t find an aca-
demia dancer?” Little did I know that such a practical question would open