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.
From Cuba with Love Sex and Money in the Twenty-First Century
About the Book
Reviews
"She has succeeded -- crafting an engrossing, complex text that will be useful for scholars across a wide range of disciplines: women and gender studies, sociology, political science, criminology, law and society, and international studies. Additionally, her strong methodological focus is a useful guide for students beginning fieldwork with hidden populations or engaging controversial topics."—Criminal Law and Criminal Justice Books"Megan Daigle’s examination of Cuban sexual desire transported me to a world about which I knew little. With vivid stories, crisp writing, a unique ethnographic style, innovative methods, and precise theoretical analysis, she offers a provocative and visceral picture of sex work in Cuba."—Naeem Inayatullah, editor of Autobiographical International Relations
"Daigle is to be commended for her determination to go beyond the all-too-familiar ways of addressing a subject that is often treated casually, in fleeting journalistic visits to Cuba, or stereotypically, arising from a priori conceptions. Instead, her refreshingly different and welcome approach is not to condemn (either the system or the people involved) but rather to understand and explain."—Antoni Kapcia, Centre for Research on Cuba, University of Nottingham
"Drawing the reader in from the first sentence, Daigle’s book delicately weaves theory and storytelling. Counterintuitively reading agency and possibility through the lives and stories of the jinetera, Daigle tells a compelling story full of political insights about gender, race, and colonial power and the complexities of contemporary Cuba."—Marysia Zalewski, Head of the School of Social Science, University of Aberdeen
Table of Contents
Acknowledgments
Introduction: Ochún and Yemayá
1. From Mulata to Jinetera: Prostitution as Image of Thought
2. Love, Sex, Money, and Meaning: Interrogating Jineterismo on the Ground
3. Lessons in Subterfuge: Everyday Acts of Repression and Resistance
4. There Is Only One Revolution: State Institutions and the Moral Revolution
5. Conduct Unbecoming: Bodily Resistance and the Ethics of the Self
Conclusion: On the Malecón
Notes
Bibliography
Index