Migrating Like a Queen

<P><B>An imaginative exploration of queer and trans Latinx migrant survival, examining literature, film, and performance to challenge normative constructions of citizenship and belonging.</B></P><P>Queer and trans migrants in the US face persistent fictions depicting them as powerless. Through the lens of "impossible possibilities," what Ruben Zecena defines as a space between the possible and impossible, the book presents a complex account of undocumented migrants that goes beyond good and bad dichotomies expressed by the state.</P><P><I>Migrating like a Queen</I> highlights the joy, fabulosity, glamour, and complex desires of queer and trans Latinx migrants in the context of dehumanizing legal and representational structures. Analyzing a rich archive of twenty-first century media and literature, Ruben Zecena reveals how individuals use imagination as a vehicle to envision a reality that pushes against the constraints of narrative tropes created by the nation-state. The book foregrounds work by and about queer and trans Latinx migrants, including Alexandra DeRuiz, tatiana de la tierra, Sonia Guiñansaca, and Julián Delgado Lopera, illustrating the defining of a movement. Engaging multiple genres and forms, from testimonio to the bildungsroman, this book is a testament to the ever-shifting cultural strategies of survival that seize power from systems of subjection.</P>