“The map of skin and the skin of maps”

Queer Caribbean writing and the corporeality of topography

Bibliographic Data

ID19220762
AuthorsOnyemuche Anele Ejesu (0000-0002-4110-4151, McMaster University, corresponding author)
Year2026
Pages1-21
Publication date2026-05-12
Open AccessNo
TypeARTICLE
VenueCanadian Journal of Latin American and Caribbean Studies / Revue canadienne des études latino-américaines et caraïbes (JOURNAL)
Journal identifiersISSN: 0826-3663 • E-ISSN: 2333-1461
PublisherTaylor & Francis (PUBLISHER • GB)
DOI10.1080/08263663.2026.2667523
OpenAlexW7160957560
LanguageEN
References cited19

In this article, I provide further creative and critical contexts for Nadia Salgado’s notion of corporeal consciousness. Exploring the body-place trope, I ask what orientations of corporeal consciousness emerge from queer Hispanic Caribbean writing in its interanimation with topos-politics. I argue that queer Caribbean writing presents a critically generative engagement with the land-body trope, an intervention enriched by its peculiar historical positionality, for the queer body is more likely to suffer alienation from the Caribbean topos on account of sex, as well as multiple layers of othering akin to the type initially mapped onto the Caribbean lands in the colonial imaginary but creatively and variously reimagined by queer Caribbean writers. I demonstrate this by close-reading works by Lawrence La Fountain-Stokes, Emanuel Xavier, Rane Arroyo, Reinaldo Arenas and Achy Obejas, synthesizing four orientations of the body-topos trope. The significance of this intervention is that it offers tentative coherence to the mesh of thoughts on embodiment and place in Hispanic Caribbean discourse, and documents the value, texture and legacies of a queer meditation on the trope. By mesh of thoughts, I mean the various interlocking individual interventions that the selected texts are making regarding the question of place and body

Ethnography · Narrative · Photography · Queer · Caribbean and African Literature and Culture · Caribbean history, culture, and politics · Latin American and Latino Studies

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