Friday, January 9, 2015

"From Cuba with Love"

New from the University of California Press: From Cuba with Love: Sex and Money in the Twenty-First Century by Megan D. Daigle.

About the book, from the publisher:
From Cuba with Love deals with love, sexuality, and politics in contemporary Cuba. In this beautiful narrative, Megan Daigle explores the role of women in Cuban political culture by examining the rise of economies of sex, romance, and money since the early 1990s. Daigle draws attention to the violence experienced by young women suspected of involvement with foreigners at the hands of a moralistic state, an opportunistic police force, and even their own families and partners.

Investigating the lived realities of the Cuban women (and some men) who date tourists and offering a unique perspective on the surrounding debates, From Cuba with Love raises issues about women’s bodies–what they can or should do and, equally, what can be done to them. Daigle’s provocative perspective will make readers question how race and politics in Cuba are tied to women and sex, and the ways in which political power acts directly on the bodies of individuals through law, policing, institutional programs, and social norms.
Megan Daigle is a postdoctoral fellow at the Gothenburg Centre for Globalization and Development.

--Marshal Zeringue